Softbank is believed to be putting together a consortium of companies to bid for TikTok’s India operations and is actively looking for local partners, Bloomberg reported. Softbank, which already owns a stake in TikTok parent ByteDance, has reportedly held talks with the heads of Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel. Reliance Jio’s name has popped up in multiple reports for its reported interest in buying TikTok’s India arm. India was TikTok's biggest market in terms of user base before it was banned in June, and since then, a number of domestic clones have been trying to fill the short-video sized hole that TikTok left. Even Instagram launched its TikTok competitor, Reels, in a bid to replace the popular short-video app, which had around 200 million users in India alone. It appears as if Softbank really wants in on buying TikTok. In the US, it was understood to have partnered with Walmart and Alphabet to make a joint bid for TikTok’s acquisition in the US. This deal would reportedly have put Walmart as the lead buyer, with SoftBank and Alphabet acquiring minority stakes. However, the deal apparently fell through because the US administration reportedly wanted the lead buyer of TikTok to be a technology company so that user data could be stored in the US. After the ban in India, the US placed an effective ban on TikTok through an executive order in early August and then ordered Bytedance to sell off its American assets within 90 days. Oracle and a group of Walmart and…
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