Amidst a sea of rivals that have been born since the TikTok ban in India, few competitors stand large. Now, streaming service Zee5 has added another fighter in the arena in the form of HiPi. The new app is another short-video creating tool that lets users create 90-second videos and share it amongst their circles.
Celebrities, influencers, and commoners can all shoot and upload 90-second videos on the new service HiPi, Tarun Katial, chief executive officer of Zee5, said in an interview. A part of Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd., HiPi will be defending its turf in the competition against Netflix Inc. and Walt Disney Co. to grow its subscribers in India.
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“The HiPi launch has nothing to do with the TikTok ban in India. We were working on HiPi for the last one year,” Katial said. Zee5 is now an “entertainment super-app” with content ranging from normal streaming fare to short videos to take on social media giants, he said.
The government of India recently banned a bunch of Chinese apps, citing security reasons. These include popular apps like TikTok, Shein, UC Browser, and others. Earlier around 59 Chinese apps were banned in the country and just a few days back 47 more clones of already banned apps were blocked. TikTok has gained a lot of popularity and has even defeated apps like Facebook and Instagram in terms of engagement scores or downloads.
India is one of the most important markets for TikTok, which is owned by ByteDance. The company is now in talks with the Indian government. The brand has told the government that it is ready to store data in India. It is also denying any breach of user privacy and sovereignty or integrity. TikTok is saying that it is committed to complying with local data laws and privacy requirements.
If the company successfully regains the trust, then this will be great news for TikTok creators. It is being reported that the brand has plans to open data centers in India. As of now, the data of Indian TikTok users are saved in third-party servers in the US and Singapore.
from Zee5 launches HiPi, another TikTok rival in India
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