An Assam trio has developed a video playing and sharing app that they hope would be India’s answer to the banned Chinese TikTok.

Saswati Kotoky, Amarjyoti Gautam and Himanga Madhukalya — all computer engineers from eastern Assam — told mediapersons that their free app was primarily for entertainment and could be downloaded from Google Playstore.

“It will be available for users in India and a few other countries,” said Ms. Kotoky after launching the app in eastern Assam’s Jorhat town on Saturday.

“We came up with the app for providing a platform for people to showcase their talents in comedy, cooking, music, art and any other field,” she said.

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The app has 12 categories and people can upload their videos that others can view. Like TikTok, TipTeapi allows users to make friends, follow, like, comment and share videos.

“But unlike the Chinese apps, our app is secure with privacy protection,” Mr. Gautam said, adding that they had the option of blocking videos if they received complaints about the uploading of offensive and objectionable content.

The trio said they had come together in 2019 to form a start-up for developing apps. The COVID-19 lockdown period made them focus on the entertainment-based apps.

TipTeapi, they said, took six months to develop.