TikTok had 170 million monthly active users (MAU) at the time of its ban in India. A year later, more short-video platforms in India have mushroomed than we can count – Josh, Moj, MX Takatak, Rizzle, Roposo, Chingari, Mitron, Trell, LitLot and so many more. According to Ujjwal Chaudhry, Partner RedSeer Consulting, home-grown short video apps have exceeded the TikTok user base with 137 million daily active users (DAUs) with increased MAUs to 230-250 million, almost 32% more than TikTok.
By 2025, India will have 650 million users who consume short form videos (SFV). Music Plus earlier reported on how India’s total online video user base has scaled to more than 350 million people. That’s a 24% growth from 2018 to 2020 and twice as fast as China and Indonesia. Active usage per individual has also spiked exponentially: daily time spent per active user has increased by 60% to 70% over 2018-20.
Now the consulting firm, RedSeer’s latest report ‘Entertainment & Advertising | Riding The Digital Wave’ elaborates on the earlier reports. It says that India’s short form content creators – who mostly hail from smaller towns and comprising about 45 million so far – have grown twofold in the last year alone. Monthly average users are about 1.2x compared to before TikTok was banned, while time spent on the apps is about 0.4x now.
The SFV space in India is set to be the second-biggest in terms of the time spent in one year, after the Internet biggies like Facebook and Google. It is touted to overtake streaming long form video content in the next few years.
So far, short form content has grown 1.37x in terms of MAUs and 1.1x in terms of DAUs from June 2020, when the TikTok ban happened. SFV remains on a steady growth trajectory with an increase in engagement outside the country’s top 50 cities and currently accounts for 9% of time spent on overall content consumption, according to the report.
Furthermore, global social media is on top of the totem pole in India’s top 50 cities but Indian social media platforms and SFV apps have a significant user base too. The overall time spent on short form video has grown at 57%, indicating a transition from traditional social media channels to SFV apps. Especially in the case of giants like Instagram and Facebook which have evolved into SFV platforms more than social media channels.
While traffic has increased, content creation has grown 4.4x in last two quarters because of technological innovation (better equipment, filters, etc) and monetisation opportunities with advertising, stream gifting and live e-commerce. However, overall ad spends continue to be less than 1%. But this market is expected to grow in the next decade by about ten times its size with SFV ruling a major chunk of the profits.
