Like India cut off the input An unusually high number of users of the Telegram messaging app turned to virtual private networks (VPNs) and alternative messaging apps in a week amid concerns about exam cheating.
App intelligence firm Appfigures told TechCrunch that the day India announced the Telegram ban on Tuesday was the country’s biggest day for VPN app downloads since at least the beginning of 2025. Downloads of the main VPN apps increased by 49% from 139,000 to 208,000 on the latest daily average.
Proton VPN and Turbo VPN recorded some of the biggest increases. In India, Apple’s App Store saw a 113% increase in Proton VPN downloads and an 85% increase in Turbo VPN downloads. Proton VPN downloads on Google Play increased by 64% and Turbo VPN downloads increased by 35%. App Store downloads of NordVPN increased by 41%, while ExpressVPN downloads on Google Play increased by 31%.
The increase has also pushed several VPN services to the top of India’s app store charts. Proton VPN rose from No. 18 to No. 5 in Apple’s Utilities ranking between June 16 and June 18, while its Google Play ranking rose from No. 8 to No. 2 in the Utilities category, according to Appfigures.
The surge in VPN demand follows India’s decision to temporarily restrict Telegram until June 22 over concerns that fraudsters are using the platform to re-examine candidates. National Eligibility by Entrance Exam (Bachelor), the country’s largest entrance exam in terms of the number of applicants. The Indian government has said that this measure is necessary to prevent the spread of fake examination papers and related frauds. Telegram challenged the decision in the Delhi High Court, arguing that authorities should have targeted specific content instead of blocking the entire platform. But the court upheld the restriction on Friday.
The answer went beyond app store download data. Proton said there are daily registrations from India increased by 120% After the Telegram restriction, hourly registrations were already up 150% on Tuesday evening, above Wednesday’s baseline. The company described the growth as “extremely remarkable” given its existing scale in the country.
Canadian VPN service provider Windscribe reported a similar trend. The company told TechCrunch that signups from India were up nearly 100% from baseline, while first-time iOS app downloads in the country were up nearly 89%.
“The surge in India follows the same general trend we’ve seen in areas that ban specific apps, impose age restrictions or verification requirements, or otherwise restrict internet access,” said Rebecca Rosenberg, Windscribe’s growth operations manager.
The trend was not limited to a few VPN providers. Sensor Tower told TechCrunch that downloads in the VPN app category in India rose 10% year-over-year on June 17, reversing a decline seen over the previous two weeks.
Users are also exploring alternatives to Telegram. In India, Signal’s downloads increased by 72% on Apple’s App Store, 322% on Google Play and 216% on Viber’s App Store after the restriction, Appfigures said.
Telegram-related messaging app iMe recorded one of the sharpest jumps. Appfigures said its downloads from Google Play rose to 50,900 on June 16, from its last daily average of 827.
However, the restriction did not immediately translate into lower Telegram usage. Sensor Tower said Telegram’s daily active users in India grew by 17% on the day the event was announced – the app’s biggest daily growth in the country since the widespread shutdown of Meta services in 2021.
Other data points also suggest increased efforts to access Telegram after the restriction.
Cloudflare Radar Head Lai Yi Ohlsen told TechCrunch that DNS requests for Telegram domains in India spiked in the two days after the event was announced. The company warned that higher DNS traffic does not indicate a successful login to the platform and may reflect users trying to access Telegram multiple times after being blocked.
Telegram signaled efforts to cooperate with authorities during a hearing in the Delhi High Court this week. The company removed channels identified by authorities and questioned the need for a platform-wide restriction that affects Telegram’s more than 150 million users in India, its lawyers said.
Government lawyers defended the measure as a temporary, incident-related response to the NEET retest. Advocate General Tushar Mehta told the court that a permanent ban could raise proportionality concerns, but argued that the existing restriction had a “logical nexus” to the intended objective.
In its ruling on Friday, the court found that the authorities had followed the established procedure given the emergency nature of the order.
The debate echoes questions raised elsewhere when governments restrict access to major online platforms. Sensor Tower said VPN downloads in the US rose more than 40% during the week with TikTok briefly removed from US app stores in 2025, while Windscribe said it saw similar patterns following restrictions in countries including Iran and Russia.
Note: This story has been updated to add details of the Delhi High Court order upholding the Telegram restriction.
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