Two Budgam brothers. Photo Courtesy, Faisal Bashir
After creating an alternative for China-based application SHAREit, the two Kashmiri brothers have now developed an alternative to popular Chinese app called TikTok.
TWO brothers Mohammad Farooq Wani and Tipu Sultan Wani from Chadoora, Budgam has developed a mobile application for short video clips.
The mobile application named ‘Nucular’ is an alternative to Tiktok, a popular Chinese app that was blocked by the government of India owing to “security” reasons amid LAC faceoff.
The application derives its name from the nuclear fission process.
In nuclear fission, nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei and the chain goes on. Like nuclear fission, the application is made to go viral.
“This is not just a TikTok clone,” said Tipu, adding, “We could have gone with the same design as TikTok and other clones in the market, but we opted for a more unique design to mark our product as an alternative and not as a clone to the blocked app.”
Tipu told Kashmir Observer that they’ve used video compression and cache to load a video faster and quicker.
“This helps those who use this app in slow internet networks like 2G/3G as we have in Kashmir,” he added.
He said that they’ve tried their best to optimize the uploads and downloads but these factors are dependent on network speed and are out of their hand.
Nucular uses the latest technology in Augmented Reality (AR) for its mask and beauty filters. Currently, it is the only application in the Indian market with several filters and Virtual Reality (VR) backgrounds with its first release, claimed Tipu.
The brothers plan to add more filters and editing tools as the application would grow.
A user can upload, edit and add music to any video file between 5 seconds to 60 seconds in Nucular.
To advertise the application further, the owners are planning to run a contest in coming days wherein people with more than 5000 followers could get a chance to earn Rs. 2000 worth voucher.
The duo has already created an alternative for China-based application SHAREit, ‘File Share Tool’ which has garnered a lot of positive response from the people.
The application has a rating of 4.1 on Google Play store and has crossed more than 10,000 downloads.
Tipu who completed his MBA in Human Resource (HR) from Bharathiar University, Tamil Nadu became interested in the field of software development because of his elder brother, Farooq who is a software engineer. After completing his MBA, he pursued Java and app management courses in Delhi.
A majority of work in the current app is done by Farooq who has his Masters in Computer Application (MCA) from Mewar University, Rajasthan.
Talking about the challenges faced by the duo in app development, Tipu said that the low-speed internet tampered their progress so they had to shift to Delhi to develop the software.
“Android Studio doesn’t even open in 2G and the internet speed keeps fluctuating in Kashmir,” he complained, adding, “The AR filters used in the app would not even open in 2G.”
It took them around one month to release the product. “As there were fewer engineers available due to COVID, the app took some time to get approved through Google Play Store,” Tipu said.
The developer believes that the government of India’s move to block Chinese apps has helped to create new employment opportunities for people.
“With people being encouraged to produce locally, we got the opportunity to showcase our talent to the world,” said Tipu. He is also planning to expand the team, once traffic starts growing thereby creating job opportunities for others.
After developing an alternative, the brothers would be releasing updates within a month.
The new release would include user uploaded music files, searchable music files, live streaming, rewards (people could earn money for every video like or followers or shares they generate) and many more, Tipu concluded.
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