Indian Government has announced on 29th June 2020 to ban 59 Chinese apps as it is believed to be prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, security of state and public order. This move is following Galwan Valley clash between Chinese and Indian armies.
Additionally, this decision also came after Reliance Industries Limited’s Jio Platforms owned by Mukesh Ambani has raised Rs 1.68 trillion ($22 billion) through a 24.7% stake sale to several stakeholders including Facebook. It is not surprising that one of the banned Chinese apps “TikTok” is the closest rival of Facebook. Will it pave the way for Facebook to launch its long awaited app “Lasso”, short video platform in India.
BANNED CHINESE APPS IN INDIA AND JIO’s PRESENCE IN THE INDUSTRIES
Overall, this is a strategic move which not only safeguards Indian security by keeping its data safe in its own boundaries but also to make them self-reliant and promote home grown apps. The above graph highlights Jio’s presence in majority of the industries where Chinese Apps have been banned. This surely provides Jio with an easy entry and dominance in the Indian market which is hugely dependent on the Chinese Apps for entertainment and other daily activities. Additionally, with fund raising activity, Jio now has a substantial amount for cash burn to position itself in various industries.
We need to also highlight here that Indian Government’s decision is a welcoming move. Talking about Chinese economy, China has promoted lot of home grown apps by incentivizing them while restricting international apps in order to manage leakage of data. Chinese Government has been very diligent of the type of data and conversations are exchanged between its people.
INTERNATIONAL APPS BANNED OR RESTRICTED IN CHINA
Some interesting case studies are provided for your read. Most of them are banned and others are restricted in China:
Surprisingly China also banned TikTok in order to have a control on content shared outside of China. LinkedIn is one of the few US social media companies that has broken into the giant and lucrative Chinese market. The site has north of 41 million users in the country.
The ‘Great Firewall’ in China prevents internet users from viewing or posting socially or politically sensitive content. Therefore, leading to banning of the global favorite apps. That is the major reason of India being one of the highly populated countries becoming favorite market for US giants such as Amazon, Facebook, Whatsapp, Netflix and similar companies. This is a wait and watch move for a New-India.
Contribution: Levin Tilak, working as a Consultant at Cretum Advisory. He is pursuing Chartered Accountancy and is a graduate from University of Delhi.