TikTok owner bets on Resso & Lark for a Byte of India market
ByteDance is relying on its music streaming app Resso and 'all-in-one' productivity app Lark to forge ahead in the Indian market, three years after its flagship short-video app TikTok and others like Helo and CapCut were banned by the government. Resso, which also operates in Brazil and Indonesia, counts India as its largest market. According to AppMagic, it has been downloaded over 125 million times in the country.
«ByteDance and other Chinese companies are still very keen on working in the Indian market, despite some of their top apps being removed from app stores and banned,» David Curry, data editor at Business of Apps, told ET. This renewed foray comes even as the Beijing-headquartered firm faces increased scrutiny and even a potential ban in other large markets such as the US and in Europe. India is the world’s largest internet market after China with close to 800 million users and provides a huge opportunity for apps looking to bulk up operations.
Resso and Lark are on the lower end of importance for ByteDance, contributing less than 5% to the company's overall revenues in 2022, according to Curry. «However, they are important to ByteDance's future as a technology company which is trying to reduce its dependency on TikTok and Douyin in China for revenue,» he added. Industry watchers estimate that Lark, which is primarily a productivity tool, registers most of its downloads in China.
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