TikTok survives in the US, thanks to a new corporate structure. Could India have taken the same road?

The US had in fact passed a Bill that could have led to a shutdown of TikTok in the country in 2024, underscoring the continuing tensions between Washington and Beijing amid backchannel parleys to mend diplomatic ties at the time. Months after US President Donald Trump assumed office for his second term, in September 2025 he signed an executive order titled ‘Saving TikTok While Protecting National Security’ which delayed a potential ban and allowed Bytedance to figure out a new corporate structure for TikTok in the country.

The development also raises a key question: when India swiftly banned TikTok in 2020 amid strained ties with China over border clashes at the time, could the country have explored a similar path?

The new American TikTok: what’s changing

On Thursday, TikTok announced that the new American entity was established to secure US user data, apps and the algorithm through comprehensive data privacy and cybersecurity measures. “It will safeguard the US content ecosystem through robust trust and safety policies and content moderation while ensuring continuous accountability through transparency reporting and third-party certifications,” it said in a statement.

TikTok USDS Joint Venture has three managing investors, the software giant Oracle, investment firm Silver Lake and MGX, an Emirate-investment fund, each holding 15%. Other investors in the new venture include Dell Family Office, the investment firm of Michael Dell, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies; Vastmere Strategic Investments, LLC, an affiliate of Susquehanna International Group, LLP; Alpha Wave Partners; Revolution; Merritt Way, LLC controlled and managed by partners of Dragoneer; Via Nova, an affiliate of General Atlantic; Virgo LI, Inc., investment arm of a foundation established by Yuri and Julia Milner in support of science; and NJJ Capital, the family office of Xavier Niel, a French entrepreneur and pioneer in telecommunications. ByteDance retains 19.9% of the Joint Venture.

Oracle will provide the cloud services that will host the new venture’s US user data. The joint venture will operate a comprehensive data privacy and cybersecurity programme that is audited and certified by third party cybersecurity experts, to ally data security concerns.

It is unclear whether TikTok’s coveted recommendation algorithm would be tweaked, with the company saying the joint venture will retrain, test, and update the content recommendation algorithm on US user data. The content recommendation algorithm will also be secured in Oracle’s US cloud environment.

The joint venture will have decision-making authority for trust and safety policies and content moderation.

Here’s the new company’s new leadership structure:

• Shou Chew – Director: Chew is the CEO of TikTok, where he leads the company’s global businesses and strategy.
• Timothy Dattels – Director: Dattels is a senior advisor to investment firmTPG Global.
• Mark Dooley – Director: He is a managing director at quantitative trading firm Susquehanna International Group.
• Egon Durban – Director: Durban is co-CEO of Silver Lake.
• Raul Fernandez – Independent Director and Chair of the Security Committee: Raul Fernandez is President and CEO of IT-services firm DXC Technology.
• Kenneth Glueck – Director: Glueck is Executive Vice President in the office of the CEO at Oracle.
• David Scott – Director and Security Committee: Scott is Chief Strategy and Safety Officer at MGX.

Could India have explored a similar path?

While theoretically India could have pursued a similar corporate structure instead of outright banning the app, New Delhi’s action in 2020 had come under very different circumstances. India banned TikTok (and dozens of other Chinese apps) in June 2020 following border clashes with China. The ban was more a signal about immediate geopolitical tensions and retaliation than just data security concerns, making a negotiated solution politically difficult at that moment.

While India had a massive TikTok user base (around 200 million), the US market is more lucrative for companies due to higher advertising revenues per user. This could have given the US more negotiating leverage.

Given the political climate in 2020 and the broader ‘digital strike back’ India was pursuing against China, a divestiture deal would have been much harder to negotiate and potentially seen as too soft a response domestically.