Resso, Starmaker and other Chinese mobile apps that survived the Indian government’s ban

TikTok may still be banned in India, but ByteDance’s foray into the music streaming space lives on. The mobile app Resso is a subsidiary of ByteDance, which launched in India in March this year.

So far, the app has been able to buck the ban list and survive, but it could get under the scanner, should the Indian government decide to tighten the chains further as border tension between India and China escalate.

Snack Video is known as Kuaishou in China and is one of the leading, popular alternatives to TikTok in India.

Kuaishou Technology is backed by the same company that launched PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG), Tencent.

Everyone Happy Entertainment acquired Starmaker in 2016. The company is affiliated with Beijing Kunlun Tech, a technology giant in China.

The founders of the app Starmaker, Jeff Daniels, and Nathan Sedlander, left the company in 2018.

Starmaker is popular in India, and a recent contest on the app featured Indian artists like Shaan, Neha Kakkar, and Himesh Reshammiya.

Zili is an app for short videos and sketches that is owned by Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi. It also features in the top 100 list on the Google Play Store.

In July, the Economic Times reported that it was among the 275 Chinese apps that the government was scrutinising but it has not been banned in India yet.

This is another TikTok alternative by a Chinese company that’s been gaining popularity on the Google Play Store.

The apps’ parent company Transsnet Media is a joint venture between two technology firms in China — NetEase and Trassion.

An entire bucket of NetEase Games was banned in India in the most recent list of 1118 Chinese mobile apps — like Rules of Survival, LifeAfter and Knives Out — but the vast Chinese company still has a bunch of games that remain listed on the Google Play Store.

These include titles like Onmyoji Arena, Identity V, Galactic Frontline, Extraordinary Ones, Stick Fight and others.

YY.com was once of the biggest social networks on the planet, with 310 million registered users. The parent company behind it, JOYY, has two mobile apps on the Google Play Store called YY Live and YY Music that are still available in India.

YY LIVE is a short video streaming platform, whereas YY Music is a karaoke platform.

On the Google Play Store, Call of Duty Mobile is published by US-based gaming giant Activision, but it was developed by TiMi Studios, a subsidiary of Tencent Games.

It was only last week that Activision decided to end its partnership with TiMi Studios after US President Donal Trump signed an executive order which prohibits transactions with Bytedance and Tencent, which will be effective from September 20.