Short and sweet: Indian TikTok clones on a roll, attract 240 mn users

Taka Tak, Moj, and others gain big from the void left by the ban on Chinese app

Homegrown short-form video platforms, which were hurriedly launched to fill the vacuum after the popular Chinese app, Tik Tok, was banned in India in 2020, have now become a force to reckon with, collectively attracting over 240 million active monthly users.

Clearly, TikTok’s loss has been the home-grown startups’ gain. At its peak, TikTok had over 170- 200 million active monthly users in the country.  It also had over 20 million active content creators who uploaded at least one video every month.

The Indian short-form video players have built up their own user base of content creators, with Taka Tak attracting 9-12 million users and Moj boasting of as many as 10-15 million.    

Those who have joined the short-video-form party in India include ShareChat, which has so far raised $1.2 billion and also launched Moj; MX Player (partly funded by The Times of India), which has launched MX Taka Tak; Glance, (funded by inMobi and Google), which has acquired Roposo; and Dailyhunt, which has raised $989 million and launched Josh. There are also the big global players such as Google Shorts and Facebook’s Reel, a platform where Indian users make 6 million videos a day.

As for short-form video viewership, it is divided between global players like Facebook which is more popular in the Tier 1 cities, including metros, and domestic platforms which have gained more traction in the smaller cities.

According to a report by Jefferies and RedSeer, the share of time spent on short-form video by consumers in cities below the top 50 Indian cities is 9 per cent compared to 4 per cent in the top 50. Redseer reckons that in the smaller towns and cities, the short-form video user base is bigger than that of Youtube, e-commerce platforms like Amazon and OTT platforms like Hotstar.

For instance Roposo, which has been integrated into Glance, says it has 30 million monthly active users already .

Glance says that it has started looking at various ways of monetisation, such as launching live commerce through which creators can run their shopfronts. Currently, Roposo has 500 creators who live-stream commerce, which is far more challenging than creating a short video, as it ends in a transaction. Glance has also acquired Shop 101, a tech company, to help them launch celebrity and influencer-led commerce.  

Video commerce apart, the platforms are also looking at advertisements for monetisation. Though short-form video currently attracts only 1 per cent of the total advertisement pie in the country, with the increase in engagement (at present around 8-22 minutes per user per day) more ad revenues may soon be a reality.