After the TikTok ban, Mitron app has raised Rs. 2 crore in a seed funding spherical from 3one4 Capital and a Letsventure syndicate led by startup investor Arun Tadanki. The app has additionally reached the milestone of 1.7 crore downloads on Google Play. The new achievement befell simply 5 days after crossing the 1 crore downloads mark and shortly after the federal government imposed a ban on TikTok and 58 different Chinese apps in India. MitronTV, the makers of the Mitron app, mentioned that the app noticed greater than 11 instances development in its day by day visitors only a day after the TikTok ban got here into place.
The growth workforce behind the Mitron app will use the contemporary funding to speed up its product growth roadmap, have interaction deeper with Indian content material creators, and rent new expertise to scale the tech infrastructure and make it obtainable for a bigger person base, the corporate mentioned in an announcement.
“With the support of this round, our focus is on building features and supporting content that uniquely resonates with Indian users, while prioritising community standards and local laws in India,” mentioned Shivank Agarwal, Founder and CEO of the Mitron app, in a mailed assertion.
Agarwal, a pc science engineer and IIT Roorkee alumnus, based the Mitron app together with Anish Khandelwal earlier this yr. The app went reside on Google Play in April and crossed 50 lakh downloads in lower than a month after its debut.
“Our platform is now completely scalable and autonomous and that is helping us to cater to the sharp rise in traffic and engagement on Mitron app,” mentioned Co-Founder and CTO Khandelwal.
The anti-China sentiment helped the Mitron app entice new customers on its platform. However, it did have various bugs and issues on the preliminary stage. The app was even briefly removed from Google Play for violating Google’s “Spam and Minimum Functionality” coverage. Furthermore, its supply code was initially claimed to have a link with a Pakistani developer.
“We have been working with founders from [the] pre-incorporation phase and we believe that [the] founding team is top notch with an ability to build a world-class product for Indian users,” mentioned Tadanki, lead of the LetsVenture syndicate.
The TikTok ban that came into force by the government on Monday is essentially serving to Mitron attain new customers. The app is claimed to have seen the 11-fold bounce in its visitors shortly after the ban was imposed by the federal government. Similarly, it additionally obtained lakhs of recent downloads from Google Play following the restrictions emerged for its Chinese competitor.
MitronTV claims that aside from the rise in downloads and day by day visitors, movies seen on the Mitron app crossed 24 million video views per hour up to now few days.
“We are now doubling down on improving the full breadth of user experience on the app and we are looking forward to releasing some exciting new features soon,” mentioned Agarwal.
Other Indian apps getting benefitted by TikTok ban
Mitron is not the one video-sharing app that’s getting a optimistic affect of the TikTok ban within the nation. Other Indian apps primarily based on the identical short-video format together with Chingari and Roposo are additionally receiving a sudden development because of the absence of the Chinese app that had over 20 crore customers within the nation.
The Chingari app co-founder Sumit Ghosh just lately revealed that his workforce noticed as many as 1 lakh downloads per hour of the app simply after the TikTok ban was imposed on Monday. Roposo additionally received over 4 crore video views an hour shortly after TikTok left Google Play.
ShareChat’s Moj, a brand new app that is aimed to counter TikTok, additionally received over 50 downloads within the final two days.
In 2020, will WhatsApp get the killer characteristic that each Indian is ready for? We mentioned this on Orbital, our weekly know-how podcast, which you’ll subscribe to through Apple Podcasts or RSS, download the episode, or simply hit the play button under.
While these apps are seeing massive development, most of the in style influencers on TikTok are already established platforms. Many TikTok creators Gadgets 360 spoke to mentioned they’ve moved to Instagram and YouTube as a substitute of switching to the Indian options. This suggests that there’s nonetheless a while for the homegrown apps to draw the plenty.
In 2020, will WhatsApp get the killer characteristic that each Indian is ready for? We mentioned this on Orbital, our weekly know-how podcast, which you’ll subscribe to through Apple Podcasts or RSS, download the episode, or simply hit the play button under.
