‘Bharat’ users bring Indian short video apps closer to TikTok’s base

Indian short-video apps including Josh, Moj, MX Takatak and Chingari, have now found popularity amongst users beyond the top 50 cities in India, as they continue to jostle to fill the void left by Chinese video-sharing giant TikTok, according to estimates from management consultancy RedSeer Consulting.

At present, Indian short form video platforms are attracting close to 170 million to 190 million unique users from beyond top 50 Indian cities every month, zooming past e-commerce platforms like Flipkart, Amazon, and leaving behind established social media giants such as Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

According to estimates from the management consultancy, Instagram attracts between 60-80 million unique monthly users;  Facebook between 140-160 million and YouTube around 150 million users from smaller towns and cities.  

As short form video players continue to gain popularity in smaller towns, global social media players still account for 66% of the overall time spent by users in the top 50 cities of India.   

Further, the management consultancy also adds that time spent on short form video on established platforms like Instagram and Facebook have also increased by 57% during the third quarter this year ending 30 September, as compared to the quarter ending March, this year. This signals a shift towards the content consumption by Indian users.   

In addition to this, engagement on short form video platforms continues to grow, in the absence of TikTok. Short form content has grown 1.37 times in terms of monthly active users (MAU) and 1.1 times in terms of daily active users from June 2020 when Chinese app TikTok was banned in India, RedSeer said.  

The growth in user base is attributed to new content created by creators on Indian short form video apps.  

In spite of Indian short form apps actively trying to open monetisation streams, overall ad spends continued to be less than 1% on these platforms. 

“While shortform video ad monetization is still at a nascent stage, and accounts for less than 1% of the digital ad spend, the ad revenue in the sector has grown more than three-fold in last six months and as the user base continues to rise, ad revenue will continue to grow. Live stream gifting and live ecommerce are also showing early signs of growth and will form an important monetization opportunity for shortform players,” said Ujjwal Chaudhry, associate partner at RedSeer.

Indian short video apps are now actively eying on monetisation through introducing live commerce, on their platforms, which continues to be a $275 billion market in China. 

InMobi’s video-sharing platform Roposo also recently announced its pivot from video sharing to live commerce, Mint reported earlier. 

According to RedSeer, the total gross merchandise value (GMV) through live video commerce is expected to cross $25 billion by 2025.