Source: SensortowerīyteDance did not agree to interviews for this story.īut, people around the company pointed to how it had cranked up its engine tom-tomming Helo. Popular among teens, Musical.ly a video-focused social media network had around 15 million registered users in India as of February 2018. ByteDance acquired Musical.ly in November last year for a $1 billion. It launched its short video platform Vigo Live in September 2017. Helo may be only about four months old but ByteDance has had a longer run in India. This app shows some good posts like funny marriage jokes, job alerts, Bollywood content like old pictures of Amitabh Bachchan…” Helo’s India plan “There is a lot of negative content on YouTube and Facebook. Singh, who stumbled on the app through a Facebook ad, just last week, describes the content on the app as positive and entertaining. In Alwar, Rajasthan, Tejpal Singh, who drives a school pick-up van, says he was surprised by the regional content on Helo. Helo and Sharechat, on the other hand, are 100% timepass,” Behere says. “WhatsApp is where people send long, political messages. Her phone has Sharechat, Helo, Clip, and WhatsApp and she says she prefers apps like Helo and Sharechat over WhatsApp because “there’s news, jokes and funny videos of kids and old people” on the platforms. Take the case of Gayatri Behere, who works as my house help in Pune. Most likely found on a low-end Android smartphone, Helo is powered up when the data newbies have time to kill. Like Sharechat, Helo targets vernacular, small town, and new data users. If you are surprised why you have never heard of Helo, it’s likely because you are not its target audience. In fact, ByteDance came very close to investing in the latest round of Sharechat funding before deciding to launch its own app. “The thesis behind Sharechat is ‘There is content and there is a community for that content.’ That’s why a copycat can launch and get market share,” the person quoted above said. Helo is tracking the Sharechat trajectory. The difference: Helo is powered by arguably the world’s best technology algorithms in the space. The content on Helo is strikingly similar to what you would find on other regional content apps like Sharechat, DailyHunt, and Clip, to name a few. The original app, in this case, being Sharechat. Helo is what you could call a China version of an originally successful platform. What’s more, ByteDance is spending freely its marketing dollars to acquire more users on the platform. It has still some way to catch up with Sharechat, India’s top local language social app, with some 7.5 million DAUs three months ago but Helo’s performance has experts in the space sitting up and watching. (Over 90% of smartphones in India run on Android, Google’s phone operating system.) Helo has over 20 million downloads since and records two million daily active users, said a person aware of Helo’s expansion plans but asked to stay anonymous. 2 among the top free apps on the Google PlayStore by downloads. In less than four months of its launch, the Helo app is ranked No. The technology under the hood of Helo is the same as Toutiao, its wildly successful content app back home in China, but the features, user interface, and product are tailored for a random Ajit Kumar. So much so, it has designed and launched Helo, a regional entertainment content platform, specifically for India. Nevertheless, with millions onboarding data services and apps in India every month, the world’s second most populous country is a priority market for ByteDance. He spoke like a true businessman, or a rather a true Fujian, seeking a better return on investment – preferred in millions of dollars if the currency is an option. But, he wished, it was the US in an obvious reference to how thrifty the Indian market. In a recent meeting at the ByteDance headquarters in Beijing, Yiming said that India is the fastest growing market for his company. Originally from Fujian, a south-eastern province in China known for its people of enterprise, Yiming has created a hugely successful technology company with billions of users spending countless hours on its platforms: TikTok, Toutiao, TopBuzz and Vigo Video, to name a few.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |