India's influencers still struggle years after TikTok ban

Choreographer Sahil Kumar found fame showcasing folk dances on TikTok, but his profile has been dormant since the video he posted four years ago supporting India's decision to ban the platform.

The world's most populous country offers a glimpse of what the social media landscape could look like in the United States next year, should a move to block local access to the Chinese-owned short video app goes ahead.

Several local copycats tried to fill the void left by TikTok's departure -- prompted by a wave of nationalist fervour that followed a border clash between Chinese and Indian troops -- but the biggest beneficiaries of the decision were YouTube and Instagram.

Kumar and many other content creators eventually flocked to those US-owned platforms, but few were able to replicate their earlier followings.

"It is difficult to recreate the success elsewhere, because I haven't got the same engagement on any other platform," Kumar, 30, told AFP from his studio in Rohtak, a short drive south of the capital New Delhi.

"It takes years to grow an audience on Instagram and especially on YouTube," he added.

Kumar was an engineer by training but ditched white collar work when he found an audience for his dance routines on TikTok, eventually garnering more than 1.5 million followers.

His newfound celebrity netted him paid opportunities to choreograph dance numbers for other influencers on the platform and music videos featuring Indian celebrities.

But his career was derailed in June 2020 after a deadly clash far from his home on the Himalayan frontier dividing India from China.

Twenty Indian and four Chinese soldiers were killed in the encounter, the deadliest face-off between the two nuclear-armed neighbours in half a century, and two weeks later the app vanished from Apple and Google's online stores.

The official government order mandating the removal made no reference to the incident or even China, only saying that TikTok had engaged in activities that were "prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India".

Kumar said in his final video on the platform that he agreed with the ban, urging those watching to follow him over to Instagram and YouTube.

"They must have thought thoroughly before making this decision," he said in a short speech to camera. "India comes first."

Four years later, just under 94,000 people follow him on Instagram -- a tiny fraction of his earlier audience -- and he laments that his chances to make money have dried up.

"For us, the work stopped," he said.

TikTok arrived in India years after other established social media platforms, but quickly became a national phenomenon.

A year before it was kicked out of the market, the platform said it had more than 200 million users in India -- one out of every seven people in the country.

"Every influencer, every personality trying to build an online following had to tap into the platform whether or not they liked it," Viraj Sheth, co-founder of influencer marketing agency Monk Entertainment, told AFP.

"As soon as we got the news of TikTok getting banned, everyone was helter-skelter."

Several local tech start-ups attempted to capitalise on TikTok's disappearance by rushing their own short-form video apps to market.