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Updated June 30th, 2021 at 16:25 IST

Will TikTok be relaunched in India? ByteDance officials offer compliance to new IT rules

The TikTok ban in India took place in 2020, along with 250 other applications. Recently, ByteDance has also hired nodal and grievance officers in India.

Reported by: Shikhar Mehrotra
tiktok india
IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK | Image:self
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At the beginning of 2020, TikTok India had about 200 million users in India, expanding into one of the largest userbases of TikTok in the world. However, TikTok was banned in India in September 2020, along with several other applications that posed a threat to user's privacy in the country. According to a recent report, TikTok representatives have reached out to the Indian IT Ministry and PMO officials, conveying that ByteDance (TikTok parent company) is ready to comply with the latest intermediary guidelines issued by the IT department. It is the first concrete news about the return of TikTok in India. 

Will TikTok return to India soon?

TikTok back in India 

The TikTok ban in India took place in 2020, along with 250 other applications that posed a threat to national security by sending the data of Indian users to servers based in foreign countries. Since then, the Indian IT department has revised a few guidelines and the applications that wish to operate in the subcontinent have to comply. In related TikTok news, the company was recently reported to hire grievance and nodal officers in India. For ByteDance, bringing TikTok back to India is slightly difficult owing to its Chinese origin and the not so good diplomatic relations between the two countries. 

Other platforms have created a wide userbase 

Since the TikTok ban in India, a lot of other social media platforms and companies have tried to fill the void by introducing similar features in their applications, the most famous being Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, and other Indian platforms such as Josh and Chingari. These platforms follow a similar approach as to what TikTok did, wherein users can post a short video on trending music tracks or dialogues, and follow other content creators as well. 

Pubg Mobile India, banned along with TikTok India, has been relaunched

Along with TikTok, another very popular mobile video game application that was banned in India was Pubg Mobile. However, the Korean developer Krafton managed to rebrand the game as Battlegrounds Mobile India and relaunch in the country in June 2021. The rebranded version of Pubg India had to face a lot of backlash during the launch but was not banned by the IT ministry. In response to an RTI, the IT ministry said, "Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology has no role in granting any permission for entry of PUBG or any company/Mobile app in India."

IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK 

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Published June 30th, 2021 at 16:25 IST

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