MUMBAI: No story has impacted India's 15-second dreams deeper than the recent ban on TikTok, the Chinese quick video-sharing format on June 29, 2020. While concerns on data breach and Indo-Chinese tensions led to the ban for the platform, alongside gaming heaven PUBG, the ban brought a standstill to the earnings of all levels of content creators on the forum.

"To understand the real impact of the TikTok ban in India, we need to look at the sheer scale of its Indian operations. TikTok's 200 million users include regular content creators who derived their very livelihoods from it. The vacuum left by the app has led to a flood of mirror apps in the market by Indian creators trying to take the unicorn’s place. Existing video platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram have a fight on their hand, at least for the Indian short video market," said Shakir Ebrahim, founder of Bisbo.

Bisbo, a premiere YouTube channel for animated news explainers and visual content, provides comprehensive content around political, economic and national news content. Available across 10 different languages, the channel has clocked almost one billion minutes in watch time for insightful pieces on diverse topics like the Ambani business empire, Indo-China border crisis and the recent impact of the ban on TikTok.

In June, Ebrahim had forecast a surge of viewers on existing platforms like YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, as TikTok creators would move elsewhere. Researching for the explainer, the Bisbo team found validation for this prediction. "While the Big 3; YouTube, Facebook and Instagram have a brand strong enough to pull creators, newer apps like Chingari, Roposo, Mitron, Takatak, Moj and Trellare currently offering lucrative deals to TikTok influencers to join their platforms". The idea is to catch the junta and ensure that they stay for at least six months depriving competitors of established content creators", he said.

Bisbo India's feature "Tiktok ban: Indian short video apps hoping to become the next unicorn are running in to fill the gap” which also exposes the ready-made market of Tiktok clones" has already gone viral. It has clocked more than 18,000 views in less than 24 hours and is adding to the numbers even as we report it.