ByteDance, the company behind the popular short video social media platform TikTok is reportedly in talks with several companies, trying to avoid getting banned from its major markets.
It is actively in talks with Microsoft to sell off TikTok’s business of a few countries and the U.S. government has set 15th September as the deadline. Now, as per the reports, Indian giant Reliance is also in talks to invest in TikTok’s India operations.
This is an interesting development given that the TikTok app has been banned by the Indian government for more than a month now. The social media platform’s India operation is valued at around $3 billion and Reliance is looking to strike a deal.
So far, it is not yet known if the company is looking to acquire a partial stake in TikTok or acquire the whole India operation. If the deal works out, the Indian government is likely to repeal its ban on the app.
On June 29th, the Indian government banned TikTok along with 58 other Chinese applications, citing security concerns related to the company’s data collection practices. However, TikTok has denied all those concerns and claims that the company is following all the data regulation laws.
Prior to the ban, India was the largest market for TikTok outside of China with more than 200 million users. ByteDance employs about 2,000 people in India and the ban on the app means that they could lose their jobs unless the ban gets reversed.