Choreographer Sahil Kumar rose to fame performing folk dances on TikTok, but his profile has been dormant since he posted a video four years ago supporting India's decision to ban him from the platform. .
The world's most populous country could get a glimpse of what the U.S. social media landscape will look like next year if it moves to block local access to Chinese-owned short video apps.
The decision was the biggest beneficiary of several local copycat companies that sought to fill the void left by TikTok's withdrawal, spurred by a wave of nationalist fervor following border clashes between Chinese and Indian militaries. It was YouTube and Instagram.
Kumar and many other content creators eventually flocked to these US-owned platforms, but few were able to recreate their early following.
“I haven't had the same kind of engagement on other platforms, so I'm looking forward to finding success elsewhere,” Kumar, 30, told AFP from his studio in Rohtak, a short drive south of the capital New Delhi. It's difficult to recreate.”
“It takes years to grow an audience on Instagram, especially YouTube,” he added.
Read | Why is the government cracking down on TikTok?
Kumar was an engineer by training, but he ditched his white-collar job after finding an audience for his dance routines on TikTok, where he eventually amassed more than 1.5 million followers.
His newfound celebrity has given him paid opportunities to choreograph dance numbers for other influencers on the platform, as well as music videos featuring Indian celebrities.
But in June 2020, his career was derailed when a deadly conflict occurred in the Himalayan frontier that separates India and China, far from home.
“India first”
Two weeks later, the app disappeared from Apple and Google's online stores, two weeks after the clash killed 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers and marked the deadliest showdown between the two nuclear-armed neighbors in half a century.
The official government order for the takedown made no mention of the incident or China, only that TikTok had engaged in activities “undermining the sovereignty and integrity of India.”
In his final video on the platform, Kumar said he agreed to the ban and urged viewers to follow him on Instagram and YouTube.
“I'm sure they thought thoroughly before making this decision,” he said in a short speech to the cameras. “India comes first.”
Four years later, just under 94,000 people follow him on Instagram, a fraction of his former audience, and he laments the loss of his chance to make money.
“For us, work stopped,” he said.
TikTok arrived in India years later than other established social media platforms, but quickly became a national phenomenon.
A year before its removal from the market, the platform announced it had more than 200 million users in India, which equates to one in seven Indians.
“Everyone was Helter Skelter.”
“Every influencer, every talent, who is trying to grow their following online, is using the platform whether they like it or not,” Viraj Sheth, co-founder of influencer marketing agency Monk Entertainment, told AFP. I needed to take advantage of it.”
“As soon as we heard the news that TikTok was banned, everyone was confused.”
Several local tech startups sought to capitalize on TikTok's demise by rushing to market with their own short-form video apps.
But in the end, it was the established U.S. platform that was best equipped to win in new markets.
In the first year after the ban, Instagram posted about 6 million short videos from India every day to Reels, which offered its own interface to try to match TikTok's content model.
By comparison, 2.5 million videos are posted every day on Indian video-sharing platform Moj, according to local media reports.
Market research firm Statista estimates that more than 362 million people in India use Instagram, and a further 462 million use YouTube. YouTube launched TikTok rival Shorts in the same year as India's ban.
This compares to Redseer Strategy Consultants' estimates published last November of 250 million total viewers across various first-party video apps.
“When TikTok was banned, everyone expected that perhaps some other app would come along and take over,” Amiya Swarup of professional services firm EY India told AFP.
“But as you know, Instagram and YouTube Shorts still dominate when it comes to short-form videos.”
While this has been beneficial for their respective parent companies, Meta and Google, some influencers have struggled with the transition, Monk Entertainment's Sheth said.
While TikTok's endless scrolling interface and algorithms are known for matching viewers with the content they want to see and boosting niche content creators, rivals need a different formula for success, Sheth said.
“Maybe you didn't have to show as much personality on TikTok,” he says. “You can't replicate that very well on a platform like Instagram.”
