From MX TakaTak to Roposo, TikTok's Indian clones play a tough catch-up

Local contenders have cashed in on the Chinese short video app's exit but acquiring the scale to sustain themselves will be a huge challenge going forward

Less than a year after the government banned Chinese-owned TikTok, and the short video app announced that it would exit the India market, many local contenders have tried to replicate it but a clear winner is yet to emerge.

Success, in the long run, depends on a host of factors, but what is clear so far is that the winner will most likely be someone who has built its product on a pre-existing user behaviour repository.

Immediately after the government announced a ban on Chinese ByteDance-owned TikTok in June last year, new players such as Chingari and Mitron appeared. Less