HOW DID INDIA BLOCK THE INTERNATIONAL VERSION OF TIKTOK? INDIA IS MORE RUTHLESS THAN THE UNITED STATES!

In 2019, a staggering statistic revealed a phenomenon that should not be overlooked: on the international version of Douyin, also known as TikTok, the Indian public showed extraordinary enthusiasm and addiction to the short video app. Statistics show that TikTok's total market share accounts for almost half of the world's regions except China, which is enough to prove its extensive influence and popularity in the international market.

The Chinese short-form video app successfully entered the Indian market back in September 2016, and in just a year and a half, its monthly active users surpassed a staggering 3 million mark. Subsequently, its user scale was even more overwhelming, easily crossing the 100 million mark, showing its strong growth potential and user attraction, which not only highlights TikTok as a leader in the field of short video, but also highlights the competitiveness and influence of Chinese Internet companies in the global market.

On its journey into the Indian market, its parent company, ByteDance, has shown extraordinary strategic vision. In the face of the special environment of India, a multilingual country, ByteDance has successfully adapted to the 15 regional languages of India, which has undoubtedly greatly enhanced its penetration and affinity in the Indian market, you must know that even in India, the largest Hindi population only accounts for more than 40% of the total population, and this multilingual adaptation strategy obviously helps ByteDance to better meet the needs of Indian users in different regions and different language backgrounds.

At the same time, ByteDance has a deep insight into the entertainment preferences of the Indian people, focusing on spreading the entertainment content such as Indian music and dance, which are loved by the Indian people, and by condensing these Bollywood songs and dances that are loved by the Indian people into the increasingly popular smartphones, ByteDance has successfully built TikTok into a part of the daily life of the Indian people.

In addition, ByteDance has further enhanced TikTok's popularity and influence in the Indian market through cooperation with Indian celebrities, which not only attracted the attention of a large number of Indian users, but also successfully attracted 200 million Indian users to join the TikTok family, including 150 million monthly active users.

In India's mobile app market, tiktok leads the way in terms of downloads, which not only demonstrates ByteDance's strong competitiveness in the Indian market, but also lays a solid foundation for its further global expansion.

Tiktok's popularity has undoubtedly had a significant impact on the business of competitors, among which Facebook in the United States has been particularly hard-hit, followed by Google's YouTube, from the data point of view, in the first quarter of 2019, Tiktok downloads surged by 188 million, which even exceeded Facebook's 176 million downloads, this achievement made Facebook feel pressure, and what made them even more angry is that ByteDance advertised on various social media, including Facebook, and traditional TV media to promote Tiktok, and its customer acquisition cost was only 20 cents.

Some Facebook insiders once expressed contempt for this, believing that it is just a stupid strategy of ByteDance Group to place Tiktok ads from Facebook, the social tool of the American version of Renren, they believe that Facebook has a lot of data and can accurately analyze the effect of advertising, and they found that the conversion rate of clicking from Facebook ads to Tiktok and registering members is not high, so they think that they have earned a lot of advertising fees, and they don't have to worry too much about this competitor from China.

However, as the ancients said, no step can lead to a thousand miles, and over time, the facts have proved the tenacity and perseverance of Byte Group and Tiktok, they adopted the strategy of moving mountains by Yugong, and through continuous efforts, they finally achieved a leap from quantitative change to qualitative change, making Tiktok soar to the sky. In the Indian market, Tiktok has directly eroded Facebook's social media market, and its short video apps such as Instagram and RI els have been powerless under Tiktok's powerful offensive.

As early as 2019, with a far-sighted strategic vision, ByteDance successfully poached senior media person Nigel Gandhi from Times Network Group, a leader in the Indian media industry, and appointed him as the head of the business in India and South Asia, aiming to deepen the local market and promote the vigorous development of the business, which is not only to further expand the local market share and build TikTok into an industry giant, but also carries ByteDance's more far-reaching goals and vision.

Since his appointment, TikTok's advertising revenue has continued to climb and shown strong growth momentum, Gandhi not only has a wealth of media experience, but also has an extensive network of contacts, and he has successfully invited well-known Bollywood actors including Deepika Padukone and Jackel Fernandez to TikTok, bringing more attention and user activity to the platform.

Under Gandhi's leadership, ByteDance has formulated an ambitious development plan for its Indian business, and they plan to invest up to $1 billion in the Indian business over three years, aiming to build India into the world's largest short video market outside of China.

In fact, as early as April 2019, Indian lawmakers briefly banned TikTok from downloading in the Apple and Android app stores, citing the possibility that the app may have a negative impact on young people and lead to cultural degradation, but with the active defense of ByteDance's lawyers, the company successfully deleted more than 6 million videos that violated the terms of use and community guidelines, blocking offensive content, blocking the playback of nude videos, and constantly upgrading the system to identify problematic videos have effectively defused the crisis and once again proved ByteDance's decisiveness and efficiency in responding to market challenges.