Starting with the fight at Galwan Valley India extended the fight to Cyber space. The current pandemic situation has brought the whole world to a pause and has led to a economic depression affecting almost every country. Since, China is solely responsible for the current crisis, countries around the world including America have already started boycotting Chinese goods and banning Chinese apps. India was still left to take the action against China but the situation got worse when China tried to create a war hysteria and attacked Indian Army in Galwan River valley. As a result of the attack on the Indian army, Indian government under sec 69/A of the IT Act and Rules banned all Chinese goods and 59 Chinese apps concerning the security threats in Indians.
India is one of those countries who has suffered the most and is still witnessing the worst scenario of the Covid-19 pandemic but things went beyond hands when China instead of helping, attacked Indian Armies. To overcome China’s attack, India on the ground of national security concern decided to ban all the Chinese apps and products.
India has a huge market and China has no doubt conquered the most part of Indian market through apps and products. In the month of July, 2020 India banned most of the Chinese apps that significantly brought down the growth of market for Chinese. Some famous apps like Alibaba , Xiaomi and UC browser has made their own identity in Indian market and when these were banned, China suffered a huge decline in market shares. Another famous Chinese app TikTok was successful in capturing Indian app market and no doubt India has been one of the biggest profit driver for this app. Around 30% of the Indian population has installed this app that accounts to 611 million Indians. With the ban of this TIK-TOK app India has been successful in ceasing new comers as they will be unable to download the app and the existing ones won’t be able to download updates and this caused a total loss of $10 million to the Chinese. Other Chinese apps that are also banned in India are ShareIt, Kwai,UC Browser, Baidu map, Shein, Clash of Kings, DU battery saver, Hello, Likee, YouCam makeup, Mi Community, CM Browers, Virus Cleaner, APUS Browser. Yes, this app war will be a bit tough as there are many Chinese invested Indian app including some of the star apps and valuable startups like Paytm backed by Ant Financial and the education star Byju’s by Tencent as investor not only these there are total 30 Indian apps with Chinese investment and banning these will be difficult for the country as of now. To overcome this problem a new investment rule is brought to action.
Since we all have become so much habituated to these apps, it might seem difficult but, sooner or later we will be accustomed to it as India is launching apps as substitutions. Although there are still few imports from china to India like medicines, pharmaceutical ingredients which are hard to be substitute in the market. Recently PM Modi has launched “Make in India” Campaign to facilitate investment, foster innovation, enhanced skill development, protect intellectual property and build best in class manufacturing structure . This app war has led Sputnik Moment for local technology industry.Hence, it is important to raise a wall against china so as to weak its power. Indeed, the decision was well taken by India but if the India-China App war intensifies many businesses with Chinese investments may get impacted which would have led to trade war but, it was very much needed to bring a change and boycott Chinese apps.