Many Indian alternative apps have surfaced in the recent months as Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the “Aatma Nirbhar Bharat” campaign. However, the excitement for the new Made in India, Jio video-conference app soon faded away.
India’s leading telecom firm, Reliance recently launched its new video conferencing app, JioMeet. Not surprisingly, the launch came at a time when voices for boycotting Chinese Apps and supporting Made in India apps are growing louder in the country. However, netizens felt disappointed over the apparently mimicked design from the rival Zoom itself.
While users were still hoping that Jio would be redesigning the conference app, it released the redesigned version of its messaging platform. As JioMeet had almost looked like Zoom, the new JioChat or the Jio messenger looks almost identical to WhatsApp. Curiously, the redesigned look for Jio messenger app comes after WhatsApp owning Facebook invested in the Indian firm.
Jio messenger app, JioChat is one of the many apps owned by the telecom giant developed primarily for its SIM card users. JioChat offers enhanced messaging features as well as HD voice & video calling options. If we were to ignore its copy-cat design aspect, it does offer a good Indian alternative for WhatsApp.
Innovation or Imitation
The recent wave of Aatma Nirbhar Bharat has led to tremendous support from the citizens and quick surge in downloads of Indian apps. However, it would be crucial for the Indian developers to focus on innovation and originality to make a lasting impact as we move forward.
It is indeed heartening to see the growth of indigenous apps in the country. But, at the same time, it is also a little disappointing to see most of these alternative apps can hardly be described anything but clones of the well-known mobile applications in their respective apps.
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While a few imitations can be excused or forgiven among apps developed by the new start-ups, copy-cats from well-established players like the Reliance Jio simply feels absurd. Twitterati was also quick to point out and trolled the Jio messenger app, JioChat for looking exactly like WhatsApp.
A Twitter Users shared screenshots from JioChat and WhatsApp in which the former looks almost like a replica of the latter.
Another user tweeted, “#Jio does it again. Checkout the “Fresh new look” of #JioChat. Have you seen this UI before? Now please don’t tell me #Facebook ‘allowed’ Jio to use the #WhatsApp UI after $5.7 billion of investment in the company being run by Asia’s richest person.”
Let us know your thoughts on the Jio messenger and other emerging alternative Indian apps like Mitron in the comments below.
