Chinese short-video making app Tik Tok donates medical gear worth Rs 100 cr to India 

DELHI: Tik Tok, owned by Chinese parent company ByteDance, has donated medical gear worth Rs 100 crore to India amid COVID-19 pandemic.

This includes 400,000 hazmat medical protective suits and 200,000 masks for medical staff treating patients.

“The Government of India has been making concerted efforts to contain the spread of the virus and through this donation we want to contribute towards this effort. With support from the Union Ministry of Textile, this essential gear, which meets the prescribed standards and guidelines, is being handed over to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare,” the company said in a statement.

TikTok has 700 million users globally, out of which over 200 million are now in India, and growing exponentially. Despite being pulled by the law enforcement agencies for vitiating the digital atmosphere in the country, TikTok has created its own fan following and US players like Facebook and its apps WhatsApp and Instagram are a worried lot.

Global market research firm Forrester estimates that short video ad spending for the key Asia Pacific markets of Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea is likely to hit $4.7 billion in 2019.

“TikTok’s success among non-Chinese consumers is partly due to its ability to adapt to domestic markets from a content and cultural point of view. In India, TikTok has its own local team that plans and monitors content specifically for younger demographics. This has attracted a high number of active users on its platform,” explains Meenakshi Tiwari, Forecast Analyst at Forrester.

Alibaba-backed Paytm has shown how Chinese bigwigs create space in a country, without actually being physically present there. China’s financial services company Ant Financial, an affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holdings, owns nearly 38 per cent in One97 Communications, which is the parent company of Paytm which has over 200 million users.

After failing to create an impact in the ecommerce space while burning cash in Paytm Mall, Alibaba has now launched Yoli app which is an aggregator platform where users can find the best deals being offered on Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra, Paytm Mall, Tata Cliq, Bigbasket, Snapdeal and more. The app has been downloaded over a million times on Google Play Store.

Chinese B2B e-commerce platform Club Factory last week surpassed 100 million monthly active users (MAUs) in India — mostly from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Telangana.

According to Vincent Lou, Founder and CEO, Club Factory, the company managed to reduce delivery time by as much as 30 per cent with average positive product rating going up by 40 per cent in 2019. “Returns or product exchange on the platform have dropped by almost 25 per cent, said Lou.

As of December 2019, Club Factory’s registered local seller base stands close to 30,000.

The aim, like TikTok, is clear: Create a niche space especially in small-town India and stay afloat.

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