American short-video app Triller has teamed up with Indian music streaming company, JioSaavn, owned by India’s largest conglomerate, Reliance, to tap the huge opportunity created after India banned ByteDance-owned TikTok, along with 58 other Chinese apps in June.
JioSaavn is one of the most successful consumer-facing apps offered by Jio Platforms, the digital arm of Reliance. Jio Platforms also owns India’s largest telecom provider, Jio Infocomm, which has close to 400 million subscribers.
The strategic partnership will allow JioSaavn users to create Triller videos directly on the music streaming app. According to the Los Angeles-headquartered company, Triller would soon be embedded in JioSaavn app.
“When any music video is watched within the JioSaavn streamer, it will automatically be a Triller music video, which will exponentially grow Triller’s users and usage,” the company said in a statement. Furthermore, JioSaavn’s streamer will have a button to “Make a Triller Video” on the app’s main screen, it added.
“We couldn’t be more pleased to have partnered with not only the biggest company in India but one of the biggest and most important companies in the world,” Bobby Sarnevesht, Executive Chairman of Triller, said in a statement.
The development comes at a time when Reliance is reportedly in talks with ByteDance to invest in TikTok’s India operations.
Read this: Global music streaming platforms tune in to capture the India market
Triller, which competes with TikTok in the US, became the most downloaded free iOS app in the country on August 1, owing to the latter’s uncertain future in the American market. According to local media Indian Express, the app has 260 million downloads and over 75 million active users globally, as of August 10.
In India, Triller’s app downloads shot up from 1 million to 30 million almost overnight after the ban on TikTok. As of now, it has over 40 million downloads in the country, where it competes with Instagram’s Reels and a dozen other homegrown short-video apps like Mitron, Chingari, Trell, and Roposo. TikTok reportedly had a user base of over 200 million in India.
To drive the growth in the Indian market, Triller has hired Raj Mishra as the head of operations for India. Mishra is the former country manager of TikTok India, who also spearheaded strategy for ByteDance’s other short-video app Helo last year.
Rishi Malhotra, co-founder and chief executive of JioSaavn, believes the alliance is a win-win for both companies.
“We have built a user-centric and data-driven platform with a focus on consumer experience and groundbreaking original content. Connecting creators to millions of fans is at the core of everything we do. We are confident that this partnership will exponentially grow both companies,” Malhotra said in a statement.
In June, JioSaavn said, it had more than 104 million monthly active users. It competes with bigwigs like Spotify, YouTube Music, Gaana, and ByteDance-owned Resso, which is still allowed to operate in the country.
Separately, homegrown social media entertainment app ShareChat, which is backed by Twitter and Shunwei Capital, on Wednesday said it has signed an agreement with India’s largest music label, T-Series, to license its music catalog on its platforms. The collaboration would provide “an enhanced experience” on ShareChat and its short-video platform Moj, the company said in a statement. It claimed there are over 180 million active users across ShareChat and Moj.
