Helo expects 100 million monthly users by 2019-end

Mobile messaging app Helo expects to double monthly active user to 100 million by the end of this year, mainly on the back of increased focus over content creation on its platform.

"We have completed one year of our operations in India. We were 25 million in 2018 and in first two quarter our monthly active users (MAU) have grown by 100 per cent to 50 million in first half of 2019. By end of this year, we expect to reach 100 million MAU," Helo, Head of Content Operations, Shyamanga Barooah told PTI.

He said the company has been focussing on to promote content creators, which led to growth in MAU of Helo - owned by Chinese firm Bytedance that operates popular video app TikTok.

Barooah said that with focus on Indian users, the company has started connecting non-resident India in more than 13 countries including - USA, Canada, Singapore, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and Bangladesh.

"Now, we want to grow our platform by 300 per cent across all parameters by end of 2019 compared to our business in 2018. It will be features, partners etc and not just in terms of user base," he said.

Helo has appointed grievance officer to meet requirement of Indian government and increasing partners with moderators to check fake information on it platform.

"Between April and June , we pulled out 5 million post and about 1,60,000 account that violated our community guidelines. We rolled out our platform in other markets couple of months back so majority of them (post and accounts) have to be from India," Raj Mishra, head of creator strategy and growth, Helo, said.

He said that company's focus is to encourage content development for which monetisation also will start in sometime.

"We have launched Helo Power Program with focus on content creators across regional languages in India. This was one of the many effort which pushed user growth. We are building and launching tools to give full analytics of content," Mishra said.