TikTok CEO writes to govt to share India expansion plans

NEW DELHI: Chinese short video platform TikTok has offered to set up an engineering centre to design and develop products in India while reiterating its plan to establish a local data centre in a letter to the Indian government, top officials said.

Kevin Mayer, TikTok’s US-based CEO, who wrote to electronics and IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad soon after the app — along with 58 other Chinese apps — was banned by India on Monday over concerns of national security, has also sought a personal meeting to explain the data-sharing practices of the ByteDance-owned platform, the people cited above told ET. With the latest proposal TikTok is trying to take its engagement with the country “to the next level”, one of the officials said.