Xiaomi’s Manu Jain tweets about meeting ByteDance CEO

“Inspired meeting Zhang YiMing, Founder CEO of #ByteDance, one of the most valued startups in the world,” Jain said. “ByteDance runs #TikTok, a very popular video-sharing app. We spoke about fast evolving Indian internet industry,” he added.

“How many of you use #TikTok? Should I try it,” he asked. While many of Jain’s 2,24,000 followers on Twitter urged him not to use TikTok, some even expressed fear that TikTok may come pre-installed on Xiaomi phones. “Plz don’t and don’t even think about pre-installing tiktok in your smartphones!” said an user. “Don’t add tiktok as a bloatware in miui,” wrote another user. With over 200 million users in the country, India is the biggest market for TikTok. But the popular app has courted controversies in the past.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (Meity) last month sought response from TikTok on a set of questions, ranging from whether it is considering storing data within India and what measures they were taking to prevent users below the age of 18 from getting exposed to potentially dangerous content. ByteDance said it was planning to set up a data centre in India within 6-18 months at an estimated cost of $100 million.