Indian short-video apps, including Moj, MX Takatak, Roposo, and Josh, have hit almost 97% of once-dominant TikTok’s user count. The homegrown apps have hit this number within a year after the Chinese app was banned in India.
A Redseer report titled – Short-form video The Rise of Made in India Digital Content, stated that Indian short-form apps had retained 65-70% of TikTok subscribers by acquiring influencers and almost 30-35% new users have been added in the past year. New users are mostly from tier-2 towns, with 60% of the total user base representing these regions.
Daily active users for the Indian short-form video industry are back to June 2020 levels when TikTok was banned due to the aggressive marketing and focus on vernacular content. However, compared to June 2020, the time spent by users on short-form video has reached just 55%, Redseer said.
Currently, daily active users spend close to 30 minutes on average on the short-video apps. “In less than one year post-TikTok ban, Indian platforms have shown a strong V-shaped recovery, bouncing back to almost 100% of the pre-ban daily user base. This shows how platforms were able to design the product, execute their plans, and market it aggressively in a concise period of time. This is a strong indicator of how the Indian digital ecosystem has matured in the last few years,” said Ujjwal Chaudhry, associate partner, Redseer Consulting, according to LiveMint.
Chaudhry said that despite the growth, the monetization potential for the entire ecosystem will be achieved if Indian players reach the global and cross-sector benchmarks on engagement and retention, which has not happened yet. However, in a bid to monetize further, Indian short-video apps are also looking to offer social commerce on their platforms.
According to Redseer’s survey, even if the ban on Chinese apps is lifted, nearly 75% of current short-form video users are likely to stick with these domestic apps and are unlikely to switch back.
The tier-2 town popularity is fuelled by local language content, coupled with the availability of recreational content genres such as comedy and dance and the availability of influencers. Before subscribing to a platform, for almost 50% of users, ‘influencer availability’ continues to be the most important criterion.
The research and advisory firm, Redseer, has focused on major Indian short-form apps in its study, including Moj, Josh, Roposo, and MX Takatak, which comparatively had more awareness among the user sets.
According to LiveMint, on platform performance, “Dailyhunt’s Josh leads both on influencer and end-user activity, driven by strong performance in the Hindi belt and tier-2 cities, while Sharechat’s Moj has seen strong traction in other markets, especially in south India. Roposo showed strong performance in tier-1 towns, compared to its peers.”
