For marketers, this translates into easily reaching an audience that was harder to tap otherwise,” said Sachin Sharma, head of ad sales and customer support for ByteDance India. The Chinese major is currently the world’s most valued startup with an estimated worth of $75 billion.Typically, TikTok users create short videos set to music, often lip-syncing, dancing or acting out skits, and is very popular in smaller towns and villages across India. The ban on downloads was lifted on April 24, after TikTok assured the court that it would take steps to ensure children are protected on the application.Bijoor estimates that users in rural India use TikTok for an average of 106 minutes every day, whereas in urban India usage is for about 7.5 minutes. “Engagement on TikTok is higher than Facebook , Instagram and Twitter,” Bijoor said.Vidit Aatrey, founder of social commerce platform Meesho, said TikTok has good distribution in tier-II and tier-III cities, while fashion portal Voonik is finding that its target audience of 18-35 year-olds matches with the user base at TikTok.“Voonik and TikTok have a coinciding target audience. It made right sense for Voonik to target TikTok’s young and super-active crowd, which follows fast fashion,” said Prem Suganth VT, associate director at Voonik.Tiger Global-backed ecommerce platform ShopClues said it is currently running a small pilot on TikTok.

Source: Economic Times May 07, 2019 02:37 UTC