ByteDance, TikTok's Parent Company, Is Spending $1 Billion On India Over The Next Three Years

Despite being banned by the Indian government, TikTok remained optimistic about this market and even has the plan to invest another $1 billion in India over the next three years.

ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, proudly said that it is one of the most valuable startups in the world, with investors like Sequoia, KKR, General Atlantic, and SoftBank. In India, ByteDance also offers other platforms such as Vigo Video and Helo.

According to PTI, Helena Lersch, Director of Internation Public Policy at ByteDance, stated that the company has been improving its policies on content moderation in the past several months.

She said that this current development is disappointing, but the company has high hope to address the issue. And as claimed by Lersch, the company is still committed to its India users with an upcoming $1 billion investment in the country within the next three years.

Plus, ByteDance will also hire more people in India, raising the total personnel to 1,000 employees by year-end, including 25 percent for content moderation. Currently, the TikTok app has over 120 million India-based users and mostly favored by young people.

On April 3, the Madras High Court order the Centre to ban the TikTok app in India, stating that the mobile app allowed inappropriate content and pornography. After the Supreme Court refused to delay the order, Apple and Google immediately removed the app from their app stores in the country to prevent more people from downloading the app. Meanwhile, those who had already downloaded the app can continue using it on their cell phones.

Since the matter is sub judice, Lersch refused to give comments. The hearing on this matter is set for April 24 in the Madras High Court and April 22 in the Supreme Court.

Considering that India has a population of 1.3 billion, this is an important market for social networks. Also, as there are more and more budget smartphones available in the country, this has become the largest market for mobile data, which is an opportunity for tech giants to jump in.

Lersch added that while the company complies with local laws, it also wants to be culturally appropriate, resulting in the fact that it has an India-based content moderation team. Just in 2018, the size of this team grew by four times as a preparation for the growth.

As described by Lersch, there are two steps in ByteDance’s content moderation approach. The first on is technology approach with a machine learning too to filter content before going to a content moderation team. In India, the team supports 14 languages and has helped remove about six million videos over violation of the platform’s community guidelines.