Arti Sharma (second from right) takes selfie with a VMate's Chinese employee at VMate Beijing office on Friday. Photo: Zhang Dan/ GT

Holding a smartphone in her hand, 19-year-old Arti Sharma wanted to record everything and everyone she met in an Alibaba's meeting room in Beijing. 

In spite of taking about a seven-hour connecting flight from New Delhi to Beijing on Friday, this Indian girl did not show a single sign of fatigue. Sharma's eyes widened as if to take in all she could to satisfy her curiosity about the country of origin and the team behind the short video app she uses every day - VMate. 

Boasting more than 900,000 followers on VMate, a video platform under Alibaba Group's subsidiary UC Web, Sharma has earned more than 100,000 rupees ($1,408) after using the app for about five months. 

Posting short videos of doing farm work, Sharma changed her destiny from being a full-time housewife to a daughter who can support her family, which can be a challenge in Indian society. 

"Hello, I am doing farm work now. If you have done similar things, please give me your encouragement." This is the slogan of Sharma's videos inspiring some of her followers who commented she "looks like a heroine."

India is in the midst of a digital revolution and Chinese companies do not want to miss out. 

VMate is one of the three major competitors in India's short video market at present, with the other two also coming from China, namely TikTok owned by ByteDance and Likee by BIGO Technology. 

According to app intelligence companies Sensor Tower and App Annie, India contributed 45 percent of TikTok's first-time downloads worldwide, with about 323 million downloads being registered in India. Likee also witnessed massive growth of 173 percent and was installed 330 million times last year, Sensor Tower said. 

In the backdrop of US scrutiny on TikTok last year, US Army banned the use of the app on work mobile phones under the pretext of security concerns amid its increasing popularity in the country. TikTok has reiterated the validity of its data usage and the app's chief Alex Zhu told the New York Times last November that "the data of TikTok is only being used by TikTok for TikTok users," and it's not a menace. 

When the US politicians became suspicious and use the political method as a way to curb Chinese technology giants, some Chinese short video platforms have already copied the Chinese model to other markets with massive populations using smartphones. 

India's significant position in the global app ecosystem makes it obvious a choice. 

Copy from China

Cheng Daofang, CEO of VMate, gave the credit of the platform's success to India's robust 4G era in 2017 when the app rolled out there. 

At that time, the typical data package charged 39 yuan ($5.66) per month and gave each user 1G data per day, with the first three months free of charge, Cheng said in a group interview on Friday. He said "the outburst of 4G internet provided a fabulous opportunity for India's video industry."

Based on UC's understanding of Indian market since 2009, the company started a trial in short video business two years ago. Its basic principle, in Cheng's words, is "Copy from China."

"For short video sector, China holds the exclusive power while few domestic short video products have come out in the US internet industry," he noted. 

At the same time, two short video giants Douyin under ByteDance and Kuaishou have dominated the Chinese market with mature promotion modes and algorithm training experience based on the huge user base in China. 

Adopting the different mode from TikTok which centers on PUGC (Professional User Generated Content), VMate chose to start with common people and the running method of UGC (User Generated Content). 

Aiming to provide "fairness" and "authenticity" to Indian users, the app focuses more on grassroots users, mostly from rural India. 

As India's wealth gap is widening, some in the countryside have a strong desire to be heard by the rest of society, Cheng said, noting that YouTube, Facebook and Instagram cannot satisfy this group because those platforms cater to the aesthetics of privilege. 

"The middle and lower classes can produce videos that strike a chord among most of our users. They could feel the videos are produced by people around them, which is a core factor of running a UGC community," Cheng said, adding that this characteristic is similar to Kuaishou.

According to the announcement sent by VMate to the Global Times, within the two years, the number of the app downloads surpassed 100 million and its monthly active users reached 50 million worldwide. In May 2019, the company received a level of $100 million financing support from Alibaba. 

"China started the short video industry early and has already had a mature, steady and settled business pattern. As Chinese companies are expanding their overseas markets and India emerged as a new market, I am inclined to join a Chinese company," Lovely Gera, senior business development manager at VMate, told the Global Times. 

Challenges remain

It is notable that India gave the largest number of legal and emergency requests to TikTok last year, with 107 requests, which accounted for 36 percent of the total requests the app received globally, according to TikTok's first transparency report unveiled on December 30, 2019. 

The report also showed that for governmental requests, India gave the highest number of 11, while the US gave six. 

Cheng said a great amount of capital has been spent by VMate to deploy adequate processes and systems to ensure requisite due diligence is exercised regarding content and the standards are strict. 

When it comes to data protection and data management, Chinese companies are pledging they are abiding by the local law and rules. 

In July 2019, TikTok launched a data center in India to respond to the country's efforts to frame a new data protection legislation, the company said on its website. In the past, TikTok stored the data of Indian users at industry-leading third-party data centers in the US and Singapore. 

Cheng told the Global Times that all of VMate's servers are located in India and data is stored in India. And he is confident the company is obeying India law. 

"Reassuring the doubts of data protection is indeed one of the most urgent issues for Chinese companies to expand overseas markets, and must be attached with importance," Ma Shicong, an analyst specialized in new media industry at consultancy Analysys International, told the Global Times on Monday. 

She added the ambition for short video players are much more than running the business of short videos well. Once the companies have steadied their advantages in the short video industries, they can reach out to other areas of entertainment and social networking, such as livestreaming, social networking products and gaming, Ma said.