While the ban on Chinese apps in India saw ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, announcing its intention to close operations in the country, the affected employees have something to look forward to. Chingari and Bolo Indya, rivals of TikTok, have made it known that they are willing to take on employees who are being asked to leave by ByteDance.
TikTok’s closure is expected to render about 2,000 people jobless as 90 per cent of the staff will be let go.
Sumit Ghosh, co-founder and CEO, Chingari — which is the Indian short video app that has been giving stiff competition to TikTok — has reached out to the affected employees through Twitter, expressing his willingness to hire former ByteDance staff to work in the “same space”.
When TikTok was banned, Chingari’s user base increased by 3.5 million almost overnight, which is said to have caused its servers to crash.
Another Indian short-video platform, Bolo Indya, is open to hiring employees who have lost their jobs at Bytedance in India. Bolo Indya is looking for talent across various functions, including content moderation, user engagement, content strategy, business development, pro-product management and community management. It is also on the lookout for suitable talent to fill senior roles and enhance its leadership rank.
Bolo Indya is working on raising funds to expand its team and enhance its Bolo Meets platform with better interactive tools that will give a boost to content commerce and improve content monetisation.
