The Indian government has been urging users in the country to use made-in-India applications for a long time now. It has been pushing Indian developers as well to develop more and more Indian alternatives to popular applications like Facebook, TikTok, WhatsApp, among others. Since the short video platform TikTok was banned in India, we have seen several Indian developers introduce Indian alternatives to the platform. Some of the examples are Chingari, Mitron, Roposo, among others. The government of India now aims to take on the likes of the popular messaging platform WhatsApp. National Informatics Centre (NIC) has developed Sandes, India’s own messaging platform. The app is now available on Apple App Store.
The Sandes app is yet to be available for Android users on Google Play Store. But, there’s a way to download the application on your Android device. As reported by BGR Hindi, Android users can click on this APK link. NIc hasn’t revealed when the app will be officially rolled out to Android smartphone users in the country.
With the Sandes app, the government clearly wants to take on the likes of WhatsApp, which currently has millions of users in India. Initially, the Sandes app was introduced for government employees due to security concerns. The Ministry of Home Affairs had in April last year issued an advisory to all government employees to avoid using platforms such as Zoom, among others. Soon after, the Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In) posted an advisory against Zoom over safety and privacy concerns. This led to the launch of this India’s very own messaging app Sandes.
How to download Sandes app
The messaging app is available for download on the Apple App store. The app is yet to be available for Android users on Google Play Store. To download, follow these steps:
STEP 1: Open the App store and type Sandes.
STEP 2: Click on the first option. The app is developed by NIC and has been rated 4.1.
STEP 3: Ensure to download the app using WiFi network.
How to setup the Sandes app?
STEP 1: Open the Sandes app on your mobile phone
STEP 2: Enter your mobile number
STEP 3: Next, enter the OTP sent on your mobile number
STEP 4: You will then need to select your gender, which is optional.
STEP 5: The app then lets you sync contacts. This means you will be notified of contacts who use this app. You are now good to go.
Once these steps are followed you will be able to see contacts that already use the messaging platform. The app works very similar to WhatsApp and claims to keep messages end-to-end encrypted just like its rival WhatsApp.
