Indian short video apps have filled the TikTok void: RedSeer report

Daily unique active users for these apps are at 97 per cent of the total number in June 2020, when TikTok was banned in India

Indian short form or short video apps have successfully retained 67 per cent of the TikTok-era users, with daily unique active users at 97 per cent of the total number in June 2020, when TikTok was banned in India, a new report by research firm RedSeer Consulting has found.
 
Indian short video apps have on-boarded 30-35 per cent new users in the past year as a result of increased supplier push and aggressive marketing by platforms, the report, titled ‘Short-form video - The Rise of Made in India digital content’ has found. The study focused on major Indian short video apps, including Josh, Moj, MX Takatak and Roposo, which had a comparatively high level of awareness among the user sets.

 
“In less than one year since the Tik Tok ban, Indian platforms have shown a strong V-shaped recovery, bouncing back to 100 per cent of pre-ban daily user base. This shows how platforms were able to design the product, execute their plans and market it aggressively in a very short period of time. This is a strong indicator of how the Indian digital ecosystem has matured in the past few years. But the job is far from done. The players still have to reach the global scale and cross-sector benchmarks on engagement and retention which will further grow the monetisation potential for the entire ecosystem," said Ujjwal Chaudhry, associate partner at RedSeer Consulting.

 

The report further found that the time spent on the short video apps gradually increased, reaching 55 per cent of that in June 2020, but these apps had more scope to improve their content quality and product experience.
 
However, RedSeer also found that 75 per cent of the current short-form video users would likely stick to these domestic apps and were unlikely to switch back to Chinese apps even if the ban was lifted.
 
The new users who are on-boarded are largely from Tier-II cities. This trend is mostly driven by a stronger focus of platforms on vernacular content and ‘Bharat’ positioning. Overall, 60-62 per cent of the short-form users are from Tier-II, -III and -IV cities.

 
With strong network effects, the user base is growing fast, fuelling ecosystem growth, leading to a large monetisation potential for both influencers and platforms.
 
The players
 
The report captures something called net promoter score, a loyalty and satisfaction metric, which depends on several factors like quality of content, pricing and overall app/web experience offered.
 
According to the study, Josh, whose parent company is the same as that of news aggregator Dailyhunt, leads both on influencer and user ends, driven by strong performance in the Hindi belt and Tier-II+, -III and -IV cities. Moj, owned by ShareChat, has been strong gains across consumer and business metrics compared to the last quarter. The growth has been driven by regional language markets, especially the southern states.

 
On the other hand, Roposo, whose parent company is InMobi, has shown a strong performance in Tier-I cities compared to the smaller ones. MX Takatak, owned by Times Internet, led in the net NPS in the metro cities. The platform has held challenges and hashtag events similar to TikTok, to gain market share.
 
Influencer base
 
Influencers are people on a platform with a huge following (and thus, reach), who can earn money through branded content deals or advertising products through the content they create. They often drive interest in the platform as well.
 
The RedSeer report found that influencers with more than 10 million followers had a monthly earning of $20,000-40,000. Influencers with 1 million followers could earn up to $1000-2500, while budding creators with less than 1 million followers could earn $40-200.

 
Josh’s high NPS is primarily driven by increased satisfaction (65 per cent) of its influencers in the age group of 18-35 years, who form the bulk of the platform’s influencer base. MX Takatak comes second in terms of influencer satisfaction, as its major cohort of influencers has an NPS of 53 per cent.