Mitron is fast running out of friends

Faced with rising competition and a paucity of funds, one of India’s earliest TikTok clones seems to be giving up on the short-video fad. A lesson for those looking to cash in on temporary sentiments?

6 July, 202115 min
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Mitron is fast running out of friends

Why read this story?

Editor's note: This time last year, short-video app Mitron was all the rage. The Indian government had just banned the very popular short-video app TikTok, along with 58 other Chinese mobile applications. And close to 250 million TikTok users were up for grabs. For the many platforms which mushroomed around that time—from Mitron TV and DailyHunt-owned Josh to MX TakaTak and ShareChat’s Moj—this was as euphoric as it got. Amongst all of them, vying for a piece of the action, Mitron was at the forefront. For weeks, these platforms made headlines and held press appearances to build their base, attract money and sound like they were TikTok’s replacement. A year on, it looks like the market is made and the first casualty is Mitron TV itself. Unlike most of its rivals, Mitron had no video, content or even social media history when it started. It was founded by two engineers and former MakeMyTrip employees—Shivank Agarwal and Anish Khandelwal—to cash in on the nationalistic wave unleashed by border tensions with China last year. Everything about Mitron was opportunistic. Even its name “Mitron” (Hindi …

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