In India’s smaller towns, young people are signing up for Chinese live-streaming app Bigo Live in the hopes of becoming the next Bollywood star and earning some cash. But there’s a darker side.Bigo Live has set up a sprawling network of 10,000 paid broadcasters in India. Many of the hosts are young women who dance, sing, strip or talk dirty to millions of Indian men.Bigo Live recruits hosts through a web of 300 agencies that look for candidates in small cities and towns and train them on multiple aspects of broadcasting. India accounts for as many as 60 million of the application’s 200 million registered users worldwide. About half-a-million of these users are active on a daily basis, according to industry estimates.Bigo Live’s application carries this warning: “Vulgarity, porn, indecent exposure or any copyright infringement is not allowed and will be banned. Live Broadcasts are monitored 24 hours a day.” A senior executive said it strictly follows local rules and norms.Some of the content appears to contravene those strictures.One broadcast shows a woman on a bed in a nightdress being watched by about 2,080 people online, sending virtual gifts and making various demands of a sexual nature. On another channel, a woman wearing a white nightgown is lip-syncing to a raunchy Bollywood song. Viewers—all apparently male are sometimes asked to make Rs 100 transfers through Paytm to see an item of clothing discarded. Comments often turn lewd, although broadcasters can mute followers.Bigo Live offers multi-guest live streams too where viewers can join hosts. There seems to be some level of policing -- hosts and comments do get banned. The internet is littered with such porn cam operations but this is perhaps the first time that a desi market has opened up. A simple search for ‘Bigo Live girls’ in India on YouTube throws up hundreds of videos, showing similar explicit content. It competes with live streaming apps like LiveMe, MeMe Live and Yome Live, most of them based in China or Singapore.The virtual gifts range from Rs 70 to Rs 6,400. It is not known how this amount is split between host and platform.The company claims, in its recruitment ads, that hosts can earn up to Rs 1 lakh per month, depending on meeting targets on followers, gifts and so on. They also receive a fixed salary from the company.None of the women mentioned here took calls from ET.Even when one doesn’t use the app, it pushes notifications — like “I’m waiting for you”, “I want to call you” — decorated with hearts, kisses, and pictures of girls.Bigo Live’s deputy country manager for India, Nagesh Banga, told ET the platform conducts its business strictly in accordance with local laws, regulations and customs. It has 200 employees in India as of now, out of which around 150 are dedicated to 24X7 content and comment moderation, helped by a recently upgraded artificial intelligence system, he said.Section 292 of the Indian Penal Code and Sections 67 and 67A of the Indian IT Act deal with obscenity. In the offline world, the law only prohibits obscenity. Online, the publication and transmission of sexually explicit material is further singled out, and made punishable. It is punishable by up to five years in prison and a fine of Rs 10 lakh.“We will never allow any illegal content to appear on our platform. Bigo has always been highly reactive in dealing with harmful content and information. We are determined to provide a green and healthy Internet environment on our platform for every Indian family and for our users,” Banga told ET.Parent Bigo Technology is registered in Singapore and it is owned by Nasdaqlisted Chinese company YY Inc. It plans to invest $100 million in India in the next three years and create 1,000 jobs, marking the Indian market its top priority.Nitish Chandan, founder of The Cyber Blog India and project manager at Cyber Peace Foundation, has written a report on the Bigo Live phenomenon in India.“There’s obscenity, sexually explicit content, copyright infringement, fraud, etc., on the app,” Chandan stated in his nine-page report that investigated obscene content on the application. “At the end of this, I am not inclined to believe that self-regulation will solve any problems. Governments need to be apprehensive and proactive about such content and bring in better accountability measures.” The report was shared with ET exclusively.The ministries of home affairs and electronics and IT didn’t respond to queries.“These are criminal offences, a lawenforcement issue. MeitY does not monitor content and does not have that mechanism. Crime is a police and state subject. The Ministry of Home Affairs can take action,” said a senior official at the Ministry of Electronics and IT, who did not want to be named. “If Bigo Live is actively putting content, paying broadcasters, they lose legal protections given to intermediaries.”Apar Gupta, director at Internet Freedom Foundation, said technology platforms like this could be harmful to female creators if they don’t have the ability to act independently and make their own choices.“India can start a legal case against the company and its broadcasters. Consensual sexual expression should not be penalised if there are enough safeguards to ensure safety of these women. The regulations need to focus on consent, service conditions and their strict enforcement,” he said.Bigo Live’s Banga told ET that the company’s contracts with broadcasters stipulate that they’re prohibited from showing any illegal content, and hosts shall be solely responsible for the content of the live shows.Bigo Live on its blog said unlike platforms such as YouTube, which leave content creation up to their users, it plays an active role in defining what goes up on its apps.It designs training modules which the agencies pass on to the hosts. This involves lighting techniques, camera angles, and advice on how to divide time between fans. The prospective hosts must pass an interview to receive income from the company on a regular basis.“For a person who is looking for both money and fame, Bigo Live is the apt platform. Aspiring models and actors are switching over to Bigo Live from other platforms such as Instagram and YouTube owing to the better payout structure,” it claimed.Banga said Bigo Live wants to combine entertainment content with Indian local culture and flavour and push its broadcasters onto the mainstream platforms.“Our aim is to groom the next Bollywood star via Bigo apps to enrich the local entertainment industry and culture. Most of these broadcasters come from tier 3 & tier 4 towns, and their earnings are much higher than any standard 9-5 job offered in these cities,” Banga said.ET’s investigation into Bigo Live’s strategy to recruit small-town hosts on the platform found multiple job postings on LinkedIn and obscure job sites such as talentnext.com, talenttrack.in and learn4good.com.“BIGO LIVE We need open-minded and talkative female candidates for voice chatting broadcasting app who want to show their talents to the world and also want to become famous along with earning money from 7K to 100K per month,” a LinkedIn post stated six months back.“Attractive voice”, able to do “healthy flirting” and find topic to talk about “love and relation” were some of the listed criteria. Another post on LinkedIn sought to hire recruiters to get talent for live streaming, promising a ?1,000 reference fee, 10% management fee and 5% Beans (in-app purchase) for every referred talent.“They scout for hosts on Facebook, Instagram, modelling, singing, dancing and acting agencies,” said a person familiar with the matter. “Bigo Live’s marketing team has different ways to generate data about these agencies.”In 2017, when Bigo Live started its expansion in India, it held auditions for broadcasters at JW Marriott Hotel in Mumbai, Pune, New Delhi, and Bengaluru.“Hey, you SMARTIES out there! Is your talent getting wasted? Looking for the right platform to showcase your talent? Bigo can get you all. Get FAMOUS, Get FANS, Get MONEY, Entertain the world with your singing, dancing, stand-up comedy or anything,” it stated.And thus, it all started.