ByteDance appears to have seen off attempts by the last US administration to force it to sell TikTok to an American company or shut it down. Now the company can refocus its attention on a country where its social video app *has* been shut down for a while: India.
Bloomberg reported that ByteDance has a plan: a sale to Glance, a company owned by Indian tech firm InMobi, which in turn owns TikTok rival Roposo. Well, ByteDance and Glance are in talks, at least, which the report claimed were initiated by a third company: SoftBank Group.
TikTok has been banned in India since June 2020 as part of a wider crackdown on apps of Chinese origin, following border skirmishes between the two countries. At the time, TikTok had more than 200 million users in India, but the ban triggered a flurry of launches of similar apps by Indian companies, which have been competing intensely ever since.
The latest news follows Google’s investment of $145m in Glance and Roposo at the end of 2020, expanding the web of tech companies around the potential acquisition still further.
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