Indian Alternatives to Instagram in 2026: What These Apps Actually Are Now
2026-09-03
If you search for an Indian alternative to Instagram, you will find a lot of lists. Almost all of them are out of date — not because the apps died, but because the apps changed into something else while the lists stayed the same.
We checked. On 3 September 2026 we pulled the Google Play listing for every app that usually appears on these lists, using India as the store region. Five of the eight have renamed themselves away from feeds and short video. They are now live-streaming apps, audio-room apps, or messengers. If you install one expecting an Indian Instagram, you will not get one.
Here is what is actually on offer.
The short answer
| App | What it actually is today | Play rating | Worth installing if… |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pepul | Genuine Instagram-shaped social network — feed, Reels-style video, Stories | 4.1 | You want the closest straight swap |
| Tepnot | Feed plus live streaming, tilting toward live | 4.2 | You want a small, independent Indian app |
| Nyburs | Hyperlocal neighbourhood social app | 4.2 | You want neighbourhood-level, not global, feeds |
| ShareChat | Vernacular feed + live streaming | 4.2 | You post in Hindi or a regional language |
| Moj | Short video, now marketing itself around "short drama" | 4.3 | You only want the Reels part |
| Kutumb | Community forum, closer to Reddit | 4.5 | You want a community app, not a photo feed |
| Elyments | Private messenger | 4.2 | You wanted WhatsApp, not Instagram |
| Josh | Live calls and chat | 3.9 | Probably not — see the warnings below |
| Chingari | Live streaming and audio rooms | 4.1 | Probably not — see the warnings below |
Only Pepul is a straight Instagram-shaped swap. Tepnot is the small independent one worth watching. Everything else on that list is solving a different problem than the one you searched for.
The list you found on Google is out of date
This is the part no other page will tell you, and it is easy to verify yourself.
Apps rename their own Play Store listings when they reposition. That title is the clearest signal a company gives about what it thinks it now sells. Here is what each listing was actually called when we pulled it on 3 September 2026:
| App | Play Store title, 3 September 2026 | Still Instagram-shaped? |
|---|---|---|
| Pepul | "Pepul-Social Network app" | Yes |
| Tepnot | "Tepnot Live- Go LIVE & Connect" | Partly — pivoting to live |
| ShareChat | "ShareChat Status, Video & Live" | Partly |
| Moj | "Moj: Free Short Drama & Reels" | Reels, drifting to "short drama" |
| Elyments | "Elyments -Private chat & calls" | No — messenger |
| Kutumb | "Kutumb App - Community App" | No — community forum |
| Josh | "Josh - Live Calls & Chat" | No — live and chat |
| Chingari | "Chingari - Live & Audio Room" | No — live and audio rooms |
Josh is the clearest example. It launched as India's TikTok replacement after the 2020 ban and was, for a while, genuinely the biggest one. Its own Play listing now calls it "Josh - Live Calls & Chat." It is not selling itself as a short-video app any more. Chingari, the other big post-TikTok name, now calls itself "Live & Audio Room."
Any list that still describes Josh and Chingari as TikTok or Instagram alternatives is describing 2021.
Where the category actually went: live streaming and gifting
The pivot is not random. Feed-and-photos apps are extremely hard to monetise in India, where advertising rates per user are low. Live streaming with virtual gifting is not.
The model works like this: you buy coins with real money, then send a streamer a virtual gift — a rose, a crown, a car. The streamer receives a cut, and the platform keeps the rest. It converts a small number of heavy spenders into real revenue in a way that banner ads never could.
That is why five of these apps moved toward live. It is a rational business decision. But it changes what you are installing, and it comes with a spending risk that a photo feed does not have:
- Gifting is designed to be compulsive. Leaderboards, streaks, and public rankings of top gifters are standard, and they work.
- It is easy to spend a lot quickly, because coins are bought in bundles and the real-money value of a single gift is deliberately not shown.
- Watch this with minors. If a teenager is installing one of these apps expecting Instagram, the in-app purchase flow is the thing to check first.
None of this makes these apps bad. It does make them a different product from the one most people are searching for.
The swadeshi asterisk
This site exists to help people find Indian-made software, so it would be dishonest to skip the ownership question. Several of the biggest "Indian" social apps are Indian-founded and Indian-run, but largely foreign-capitalised.
ShareChat and Moj (parent: Mohalla Tech) raised roughly $300 million in May 2022 from Google, Temasek of Singapore, and India's Times Group, at a valuation near $5 billion. Earlier backers include Twitter (now X), Snap, Tiger Global, Lightspeed, and Tencent. The valuation did not hold: by August 2024 it had fallen to under $2 billion. The company has since said it turned operationally profitable in the quarter beginning April 2026 and is planning a roughly $400 million IPO.
Josh (parent: VerSe Innovation) raised $805 million in April 2022 at about a $5 billion valuation, led by Canada's CPP Investments with Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. Its wider investor list includes Google, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Qatar Investment Authority, and Sofina. In August 2024, one shareholder marked VerSe down 42%, to $2.9 billion.
Kutumb (parent: Primetrace Technologies, Bengaluru) took a $26 million round led by Tiger Global in June 2021, alongside Quiet Capital and Rocketship.vc. It reported turning profitable in FY25.
Chingari (parent: Tech4Billion Media) is backed by OnMobile, Republic Capital, Galaxy Digital, Solana Capital, and Valor Equity Partners, among others.
Three are notably different:
- Pepul is Chennai-based and has raised about $9 million — but from largely Indian backers, including Hourglass Venture Partners and Freshworks founder Girish Mathrubootham. Indian-founded, Indian-funded, Indian-run.
- Elyments is the outlier: built by Art of Living volunteers and launched in 2020 with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, it has raised no external funding at all.
- Tepnot is a tiny Gujarat-registered company. We could find no public funding record for it in either direction — no disclosed investors, and no statement from the company that it is bootstrapped. We are not going to guess.
None of this makes a foreign-funded app un-Indian. Every one of these companies was founded in India and employs Indians. But if "swadeshi" means ownership to you and not just origin, Pepul, Elyments, Tepnot, and Nyburs are the ones that clear that bar.
Watch out for
Josh is the one to be careful about. VerSe cut around 500 roles in May 2025 and pivoted toward AI, and Inc42 reported Josh suffering a heavy decline in monthly active users after influencers left the platform. Its Play listing has not been updated since 27 April 2026 — over four months, in a category where the healthy apps ship every few weeks. We are not saying it is shutting down. We are saying we would not build a following on it.
Chingari's numbers went the wrong way. Its operating revenue fell 53% in FY25, to ₹44 crore from ₹92 crore, though it did cut losses by 62% to ₹8.8 crore. Separately, its $GARI crypto token — launched in 2021 with Salman Khan as brand ambassador — crashed roughly 90% in a single evening in July 2022 and is now a micro-cap that Kraken delisted in 2026. If you are joining Chingari, join it for the app, not the token.
Kutumb's listing is also quiet, last updated 20 March 2026.
Nyburs is very small. It is a hyperlocal app founded in 2023 with a handful of employees. We could not find any independent funding or user data for it at all. That is not a red flag by itself — it is just a genuinely early-stage product, and you should size your expectations accordingly.
Two apps that appear on old lists are gone: Koo shut down in July 2024, and Trell has effectively wound down. If a list you are reading still recommends them, stop reading that list.
For reference, here is when each app last shipped an update, pulled the same day:
| App | Play listing last updated |
|---|---|
| ShareChat | 2 September 2026 |
| Pepul | 29 August 2026 |
| Tepnot | 27 August 2026 |
| Moj | 27 August 2026 |
| Chingari | 17 August 2026 |
| Elyments | 21 May 2026 |
| Josh | 27 April 2026 |
| Kutumb | 20 March 2026 |
The honest verdict
India does not currently have a large, thriving, Instagram-shaped alternative to Instagram. That is the honest answer, and a short list that says so is more useful than a padded list of ten apps where six are actually live-streaming products.
What India does have:
- If you want the closest thing to Instagram: Pepul. It is the only one still building a feed-plus-Stories-plus-short-video product, it is Indian-funded, and it is actively maintained.
- If you want a small independent app and don't mind it being early: Tepnot. Actively updated, genuinely independent.
- If you post in a regional language: ShareChat. It is the biggest by a distance and the most financially stable of the group right now.
- If you want neighbourhood-level community: Nyburs. Different product, but a real one.
- If what you actually wanted was a messenger, not a feed: Elyments — or better, look at Indian alternatives to WhatsApp, where the options are stronger.
The network effect is the thing nobody can engineer around. Your friends are on Instagram. No Indian app changes that by being slightly better designed. What these apps can offer is a different room to be in — a regional-language feed, a neighbourhood, a community — rather than a like-for-like replacement.
Pick on that basis and you will be happy. Pick expecting Instagram with a tricolour, and you won't be.
All Play Store titles, ratings and last-updated dates in this article were pulled directly from Google Play with the India store region on 3 September 2026. Funding and financial figures are sourced from Entrackr, TechCrunch, Inc42, Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan and Euronews; where we could not verify a claim, we have said so rather than filled the gap.