The Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group is exploring the possibility to save Tik Tok India, stated Bloomberg report. It is looking at assembling a group of bidders for TikTok’s India assets.
The report stated the Tokyo-headquartered venture capital fund has been actively looking for local partners for the bid, revealed a source. This technology-focused fund has stakes in TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance Ltd, thus, exploring ways to save it.
Representatives for SoftBank, ByteDance, Reliance and Bharti Airtel declined to comment on this.
Over the past month, the Japanese conglomerate has held several talks with the heads of Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. and Bharti Airtel Ltd.
After India banning Tik Tok, the company has been considering selling its operations in several countries. India was one of TikTok's largest markets, with more than 200 million users.
India banned the application citing fears that sensitive user data was passing into the hands of the Chinese state.
Following the steps of the Indian administration, President Donald Trump has been threatening to ban TikTok. If the ban in the United States is implemented, the ByteDance will face a huge impact as the company has been able to monetise the application in the US, whereas India just had a huge user base.
India has banned around 160 Chinese applications, so far. The ban is around applications like Tik Tok, PUBG, WeChat among a few others that are used by the Indian population. Like Tik Tok, PUBG Mobile had millions of downloads and active users in the country.
