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Last week, short video app Roposo announced that it has crossed 100 million downloads on Google Play. Dailyhunt’s short video app Josh exceeded 50 million downloads within 45 days of it launch in stealth mode before its formal launch in early September.
And MitronTV, another short video app launched soon after the national lockdown was announced, has already garnered 40 million users.
The Indian market for short-form video content of 10-60 seconds across categories — spanning dance, music, cooking, painting, acting, light humour, mimicry and more — has grown sharply from 20 million users in FY16 to 180 million users in FY20. Homegrown apps such as Josh, Roposo, MX Taka Tak, Moj, Bolo Indya, Chingari and Trell are filling in the void created by TikTok’s exit following the Centre’s ban on Chinese apps in June 2020, says a RedSeer Consulting report entitled ‘Short-form: Rising amidst cluttered content space’.
The report reveals that the number of internet users in India is set to grow to 970 million from the current 560 million over five years. Consequently, the short-form video market is also estimated to grow 4X in terms of total time spent to touch 400-450 billion minutes/month from the current 110 billion minutes/month.
“We are proud to be the first Indian short video app to cross 100 million users,” said Naveen Tewari, founder and CEO of InMobi Group, which acquired Roposo last year. Roposo is available in 12 Indian languages and has more than 2 billion video views daily.
“Short videos in local languages are expected to see demand of over 80 million users by 2022, just fourth to YouTube, payments and e-commerce,” said Varun Saxena, founder, Bolo Indya. Shivank Agarwal, co-founder of Mitron TV, said: “Dancing and music are the top two categories on our platform which showcases 25 seconds to 1 minute videos. We are looking to increase average user engagement time of 7-8 minutes per session to 20 minutes by March 2021 as well as build a revenue model for our 3 million talented content creators.”
Investor draw
The success and growth of the short-form video market has not gone unnoticed by investors. Mitron TV raised $5 million in a round led by Nexus Venture Partners in August. Bolo Indya, with 2.8 million content creators and a user base of over 6.5 million, raised $400,000 led by Inflection Point Ventures recently.
“India has the highest content consumption per user – roughly 5 hours/day on their smartphone followed by China with 4.5 hours/day. Every second person in India uses the internet, of which 45 per cent used short-form which has emerged as the fastest growing content category,” Ujjwal Chaudhury, Associate Partner at RedSeer Consulting, told BusinessLine .
The report pegs Josh as the leader in the space followed by Roposo and Times Internet-owned MX Taka Tak.
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