'Chingari hasgained firm foothold in global market'

Chingari was launched in Google Play Store in November 2018. It is a social entertainment application, founded by two techno-geeks Sumit Ghosh and Biswatma Nayak, a mechanical engineer-turned programmer. Chingari app was rebranded and redesigned in June 2020. Chingari's downloads crossed over 25 million on 21st July 2020. The application has been widely praised and has gained popularity, especially in India, after Indian government announced a blanket ban on TikTok amongst 59 other Chinese apps, in the wake of border conflict.

In 2020, Chingari was rated as one of Google Play's best entertainment applications, with a 4.1-star rating. As of August 2020, Chingari is available in over 50 countries and in over 10 languages.

Sumit Ghosh, CEO and co-founder of the app is leading the Chingari team to be the next big localised mobile entertainment platform in India. He talks to The Hans India about the journey and the penetration of the application.

Wat made both of you (Sumit Ghosh and Biswatma Nayak) come up with Chingari? Could you also tell me about the growth of the app since its inception?

After Jio's entry in the internet space, we saw that there was a huge internet penetration in Bharat (Tier 2/3/4) audience, but there wasn't any platform to cater to the regional/vernacular speaking Bharat users. Hence, we decided to get into this space and give millions of users a platform to showcase their talent and enjoy good content.

Atmanirbhar Bharat has given a boost to Indian apps. What is your take on the competition of the Indian entertainment apps on a global level. What will be your strategy to stay ahead?

Chingari witnessed a good response when we did our app launch back in late 2018, early 2019, we were in beta, and then officially launched it and saw the tremendous response growing to almost a million users back then and now to 35 million+ users.

TikTok's reach in the global market is huge. What is the reason for failure of Indian apps in garnering bigger global market share?

Well, if we have to compare you'd need to consider that TikTok has been in the market for quite a while, they started in China, understood the playbook, and replicated the same globally, whereas the Indian apps in the space are fairly young and would definitely go international. We are already seeing apps like Ola, Zomato, and you'll soon see the others as well.

How has been the response to Chingari in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities?

The response has been overwhelming. People are showering immense love on our app. Since the app doesn't have a language barrier, people of all States and cities are enjoying using it.