Indian ‘TikTok Alternative’ Chingari App Crosses 1 Crore Downloads in 22 Days

India's Chingari app has crossed over 1 crore downloads in less than 22 days. The short video platform is also among the top two free apps on Google Play Store since a week. Less than a week ago, Chingari crossed over 25 lakh downloads – and the numbers continued to accelerate due to the TikTok ban in the country. Co-founder Sumit Ghosh shared that the app was seeing over 10 lakh views per 30 minutes soon after the ban on TikTok was announced.

The Chingari app has garnered a total of 1.1 crore downloads on Google Play store. Ever since the ban, the Indian TikTok alternative, has seen a sudden surge in numbers. The company notes that it reached a milestone of 30 lakh downloads in just 10 days and had even once saw about 500,000 downloads in just 72 hours.

Well-known French security researcher Robert Baptiste recently said that the website of Globussoft, the company behind Chingari, has been compromised. He noted that the site had a malware, and it redirects users to pages around the Web. Ghosh responded to this by claiming that the issue would be fixed soon.

Chingari users get points (per view) for their videos, which later can be redeemed for money. The TikTok-like app was founded by two Bengaluru-based programmers, Biswatma Nayak and Siddharth Gautam. It is available in multiple Indic languages — Hindi, Bangla, Gujarati, Marathi, Kannada, Punjabi, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu. The app was first launched on Google Play in November 2018 while it debuted on iOS in January 2019.

Alongside TikTok, 58 other Chinese apps are included in the interim ban in India. TikTok says that it will meet government authorities and issue clarification on any unresolved issue regarding data and user privacy. The Indian government banned these apps on grounds of prejudice ‘to sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of state, and public order.'

For several Indian companies this has represented a growth opportunity. Some, like Roposo that have been in the short video space for some time now, gathered a lot of attention in the recent few weeks. More recent apps like Mitron are also rising in popularity. Roposo (launched in 2014) has crossed 5 crore downloads. Mitron, launched in April this year, has seen more than 1 crore downloads.

Why do Indians love Xiaomi TVs so much? We discussed this on Orbital, our weekly technology podcast, which you can subscribe to via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, or RSS, download the episode, or just hit the play button below.