Is there life after TikTok ? The question is front of mind for U.S. influencers and many small businesses as lawmakers threaten to ban the Chinese-owned social media app that’s become a cornerstone of internet culture and e-commerce.
For an answer, they might turn to India, which has been surviving without TikTok since June 2020. That month, after 20 of its soldiers were killed in a border clash with China, the Indian government gave TikTok users a day to post tearful goodbyes and steer followers to other social media accounts. Then the app went dark.
“When it got banned, I had nothing,” recalled Gaurav Jain, who was one of the country’s more than 200 million TikTok users. He was 25 and had just notched his millionth follower making self-help videos about mental health, men’s style and relationships. Four years later, Jain runs his own social media marketing agency in Delhi, managing Indian content creators who pivoted to other platforms or joined the influencer world more recently.
He had tried to make the transition himself but found starting from scratch demoralizing. “The counter became zero for everyone,” he said. “That gave rise to a lot of new creators.
” The results for former TikTok stars have been mixed. Gautan Madhavan, founder of Mad Influence, a marketing agency that managed more than 300 content creators before the TikTok ban, said that about a third of them were able to recapture their reach on Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts within three mon.
