In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing LAC standoff with China, it was very crucial for the country to develop some self-sufficient capabilities in every given field and lead the country on the journey of all-round progress.
With Vande, a short video-sharing social platform developed by desi rural entrepreneurs from Rajasthan's Jhunjhunu district, various Chinese and foreign origin short video platforms in a similar domain were outshone within a short span of time since its launch in early June this year.
Vande, the new desi TikTok
The app has so-far recorded almost 5 Lakh downloads on Google Play Store, and it continues to trend on Play store ever since.
Vande was one of the top trends on Twitter with thousands praising the features of the desi alternatives to Tik Tok.
"The response has been totally empowering for us given the limited resources with which we were working on the platform. We can, thus, rest assure our fellow Vande users that they will get the best user-experience ever provided by any such content sharing social platform," co-founder Ravi Godara said.
Vande features:
On Vande, Creators can upload a 12 second to one minute short videos of themselves often featuring the music in the background in any of the seven available languages on the app, namely, Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam. The short videos can be sped up or slowed down as per user's choice of creating comedy sequences, duets, lip-sync, dance or talent videos as it suits them personally.
Vande is the only desi Indian app in the instant-video sharing segment and related domains that have all these features within one interface. No other Indian short video sharing app has as many features, all in one.
Origin of Vande:
With the primary goal to build something indigenously worthwhile, three friends – Robin Singh, Ravi Godara, and Ravi Jhajharia – the co-founders of Vande sat together this summer and brainstormed for a while to come up with the idea of 'Vande' that literally means to Worship or to Honor.
"The idea came during the beginning of Indo-China faceoff. We wanted to develop something of our own which would securely belong to everyone in the country. We simply wanted to do our bit to pull out our dependence from foreign social platforms, including the ones from China back then," Godara said.
The idea of Vande took birth in rural Rajasthan at Jhunjhunu, and the three co-founders subsequently decided to base themselves from the state capital Jaipur as a primitive startup with limited resources. The work on the platform started this summer, and Vande was subsequently launched on Google Play Store on 1st June this year.
In the coming weeks, Vande got updated to create and share content in Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam languages respectively with an aim to enable an all-round creation of content in diverse Indian languages. Soon after, the Duet feature was launched and was greatly received by the Vande users.
"The response on the Duet feature became the users' way of telling us loud that their creativity knows no bounds, and that an indigenous platform was all what was needed for a safe, sound, and well-secure portrayal of their talent."
Unlike other foreign products in the same or related segments, Vande stores its user-data in the servers located within India itself, with an integral emphasis on data security of its users being the founding thought behind the origin of the platform itself.
Vande is dedicated to the heroism of Indian soldiers deployed on the border and those who have laid their lives for the country throughout India's independent existence. "In the wake of ongoing Indo-China faceoff, we decided to dedicate Vande to India's soldiers. And if you simply pay attention to our logo, you'll know where it is coming from," he added.
