This year has changed many things and has affected everyone’s life with a lot of extremely disappointing incidents. One of the recent changes is in the ban over Chinese apps by our Indian government. A list of 59 applications which include the most used application TikTok, SHAREit, Zoom, UC browser, Via video is also banned. This is a big step taken by our government due to the concern of privacy from Chinese apps which has been there for a very long time. And experts have also claimed that certain Chinese apps have misused and extracted data that can be private to the users. In very recent times, a lot of users have become more concerned about the dominance of Chinese apps in the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. Also, they are against the idea of storing the data through such apps in Chinese territory and not in India.
In recent times it has been observed, Mi Browser is collecting search queries even in the incognito mode and sending them to China. A similar thing is observed in TikTok being accused of sending Draft videos to servers in China. There have been many instances with one common issue: user data being sent to Chinese servers disregarding the privacy of users. Any data that is held in China is wide open to access by Chinese Authorities and this has sparked major concern among most of the users. Due to such security reasons, 59 Chinese apps have been banned in India.
With such an idea several people are planning to reduce dependency on Chinese products including smartphones, appliances, and even smartphone applications now. So if you are looking for made in India alternatives to commonly used Chinese apps then here are few to get you started.
TikTok Alternative: ShareChat
TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Beijing based company, and has been accused of sharing user data with China in the past. TikTok has had many privacy issues in the past and it has been a major concern for many users.
ShareChat is similar to TikTok, it is a social video platform and the company is based in India. This app has exactly similar features like Tiktok. ShareChat allows you to create professional-looking videos and share them instantly. The app allows you to lip-sync, take up challenges, and create other music videos. It also allows users to communicate and interact with other users on the platform. The app supports more than 10 different languages. The app has crossed over 100 million downloads and is perhaps the best Indian alternative to TikTok.
UC Browser Alternative: Epic Web Browser
The famous UC Browser that came pre-installed on several smartphones is owned by Alibaba Group of China; it is one of the most popular web browsers across India. The app has been accused of security and privacy issues in the past. The report concluded that a lot of personally identifiable information of its users was being sent to an Alibaba Analytics tool without any encryption. While UC Browser released a new build quickly in an attempt to fix these issues, a lot of them are still not fixed, even the Indian government alleged UC Browser for some data theft in 2017.
The two best alternatives to UC Web Browser by Indian developers are Epic Web Browser and JioBrowser. The Epic Web Browser is developed by a Bangalore based company called Hidden Reflex. It comes with in-built virus protection for users giving it an edge over other browsers. JioBrowser is yet another popular Indian browser that offers a fast and secure surfing experience. Similar to the UC Browser, even Jio Browser provides users with news and entertainment content.
SHAREit Alternative: ShareAll
SHAREit is a file transfer application but is now slowly pivoting to a content providers platform. Over usage, it has been observed that the app contains inappropriate content and there are several concerns over the privacy in the SHAREit application. There are alternatives such as Xender but that too has been banned and has a lot of bloatware including Social Media downloader and the constant advertisements that make the user experience bad to worse.
For SHAREit alternative app is ShareALL, the app is developed by an India based developer and allows the transfer of all types of files without internet access or cables. The app is completely free and supports high-speed file sharing at ease. The app also doesn’t come with any inherent restrictions on the file size. So, it serves exactly the same need that SHAREit could.
VivaVideo Alternative: Photo Video Maker with Music
VivaVideo is a popular app for editing videos on the smartphone. The app asks for way too many permissions that a video editing software doesn’t require. The Indian government had also blocked the app in 2017 for spying on Indian users. The best option for this would be Photo Video Maker with Music, this app is one of the really good HD Video Editor with all basic features to trim, cut, blur background, add music and more. It also comes with professional video editing tools and allows the user to easily create professional-looking videos from the comfort level of their mobile phones.
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Zoom Alternative: Jio Meet, Say Namaste
Although the headquarter of Zoom is in California, the product development of Zoom mainly happens in China. Zoom was also seen routing non-Chinese calls through the China server further sparking up more suspicion. An alternative to Zoom could be Jio Meet from Reliance Jio and Say Namaste from a private firm. There are several other international options including Google Meet and Cisco Webex but Say Namaste and Jio Meet are the closest Indian alternatives to the Zoom video conferencing app.
