The Invasion Of Chinese App Developers In India

If China has already been conquered, then it’s easy to understand why India becomes the next target for Chinese app developers as India is the second largest country in the world, based on population.

After Xiaomi and Oppo dominated India’s mobile sales, there is an increase in the number of Chinese companies producing touchscreen glass in India. According to a FactorDaily report, in India, out of 100 Android apps, 44 were developed by Chinese firms, compared to 18 companies from last year. The focus of the report is Android as it is a popular operating system among 500 million internet Indian users.

Top Chinese apps list consists of well-known names such as the highest valued startup in the world, ByteDance which is the company behind TikTok as well as Helo, a news app in the local language. UCBrowser from Alibaba also makes it to the list. NewsDog from Tencent and Bigo, a streaming app maker from Singapore are also on the list.

A report from Sensor Tower suggested that the popularity of Chinese apps is on the rise. In particular, among 10 Android apps in the Indian market, five are from Chinese app developers. This is a significant increase as in 2017, there were only two Chinese apps in India.

For those who have been observing the Indian tech scene in a couple of years, this invasion from Chinese app developers will come as no surprise. However, the speed of this change was a bit unexpected.

The two Chinese giants, Tencent and Alibaba, have invested substantial amounts into Indian startups a few recent years, setting a starting phase for others to follow as well as venture into India for the search of growth.

Alibaba made an acquisition of Paytm and Snapdeal through multi-hundred-million-dollar investments back in 2015. After that, Tencent invested in food delivery app Swiggy and music streaming site Gaana. Last year, both Alibaba and Tencent launched cloud computing services exclusively in India.

Xiaomi has also ventured in different fields, besides selling phones. The company has developed local services for its users as well as backing local companies.

It seems like this local approach is the key to success of these app makers in the Indian market. Instead of taking an inflexible approach like WeChat, a messaging app from Tencent, which ultimately became a failure in India, companies like ByteDance have decided to develop local teams, and even entirely local apps just for the Indian market. In the future, with millions and millions of internet users in India coming from rural areas, critical strategies for foreign firms include voice-enabled tech, local content and vernacular languages, to ensure that the popularity of their apps is not temporarily.