As Intelligence agencies in India red flag over 50 China-linked mobile apps over concerns related to safety and privacy of millions of Indian users, here are some cool and secure alternatives to some of the listed Chinese apps.
ShareChat is an Indian video creation app similar to short-video making app Tiktok. The app allows users to communicate and interact with other users on the platform.
ShareChat currently serves more than 60 million monthly active users in 15 different Indian languages. Most of its active users hail from tier-2 and tier-3 cities (like TikTok), with the majority of them relying on 2G networks.
Non-Chinese gaming apps
If you love gaming, Fortnite is a solid alternative to PUBG Mobile. While PUBG PC has been developed by PUBG Corporation, a Korean company, the mobile version of the game has been developed by China-based Tencent.
The closest alternative to the game is Fortnite which has been developed by Epic Games, an American game developer (Tencent has a 40 per cent stake in Epic Games).
In May, Epic Games announced that its Battle Royale game Fortnite gained 350 million registered players, who in April collectively spent over 3.2 billion hours in the game.
Chinese app Shareit is a popular offline file sharing app available on the Play Store with over one billion downloads. It is developed in China and is full of annoying ads.
However, one can switch to Files by Google for similar usage. Files by Google is a multi-purpose app ready to share anything ranging from apps, videos, images, audio, and more without the internet.
Khabri - India's rapid-growing digital audio app, providing content in the regional language. The app allows users to make money by creating audio content in it just like Tiktok and Youtube.
There are other popular apps that can serve as an alternative for Chinese apps such as Aiisma - Indian contact tracing app that rewards for sharing data, Paytm First games - an Indian gaming platform.
There has been an increasing demand to uninstall Chinese apps and boycott their goods after the face-off with Chinese troops in Galwan Valley that left 20 Indian troops dead.
The list prepared by the Indian Intel agencies have names like TikTok, Helo, UC News, UC browser, Xender, Club Factory, Wonder camera and Selfie City, among others.
JioBrowser is a web browser developed by mobile Internet company Jio which helps surf the Internet faster as never before, respects the users privacy and it is a lightweight web browser. It can easily replace China-based UC Browser.
Indian Selfie Camera is a 'make in India' alternative to BeautyPlus. It can make your selfie and photo more beautiful with filters as well as effects.
CamScanner is a document scanning app developed by INTSIG, a Chinese company based in Shanghai. Meanwhile, Adobe Scan offers better features to CamScanner and has been developed by Mountain View, California-based company.
The recommendations of the intel agencies have backing of the National Security Council Secretariat which determined that certain China-linked applications could be detrimental to the country's security.
(With inputs from IANS)
