Chinese Internet giant ByteDance Has announced the closure of two of its apps in India, its largest overseas market, and has urged its users to move to TikTok.
Vigo Video and Vigo Lite, two apps that allow users to create and share short-format sketches and lip-sync for Bollywood songs, posted a message on Monday (local time) to announce that they It will be closed at the end of October this year.
In his message, titled “Farewell Letter,” ByteDance It was said that closing the apps is sad but did not provide an explanation for the decision. Indian news outlet Entrack first saw the letter.
Unlike TikTok, ByteDance’s most popular apps, Vigo Video and Vigo Lite, have struggled to enter the world’s second-largest Internet market. While TeakTalk has more than 200 million users in India, Vigo Video had around 4 million monthly active users last month and according to one of the top mobile insights firms, Vigo Lite can only achieve 1.5 million users – an industry executive Data shared with TechCrunch.
While Veego Video gained less than 1 million users in a year, Veego Lite made a number of changes during the same period that data shows.
Both apps counted India as their largest market, but are available in many other markets including neighboring country Bangladesh for example. It is unclear whether ByteDance is discontinuing the app in every market. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This move, despite the poor reception of apps in India, comes as a surprise. The recruitment positions submitted by ByteDance until the end of last month described Vigo as one of the company’s biggest businesses in India.
Other positions suggest that the company intends to appoint officers to aggressively explore monetization of its services in the country. In recent weeks, BiteDance’s TicketLock app has been investigated in India for failing to actively remove videos promoting violence, animal cruelty, racism, child abuse and objectification of women.
In its message delivered to users on Vigo apps today, ByteDance said it would help them transfer their videos to Tiktok. On TikTok, “You will be able to show your talent to a large group of friends. We look forward to seeing you [there]!”