SUMMARY
CEO Even Spiegel had announced that Snapchat had doubled its userbase in India since last year
Snapchat has attributed the growth to localisation and performance improvement
The company is looking to invest more in India and considers it to be a strategic priority
The multimedia messaging app Snapchat, which is owned by Snap Inc, grown by 150% in the third quarter of 2020 versus a year ago in the same quarter. The company’s chief strategy officer Jared Grusd, who leads Snapchat’s international growth efforts, has confirmed the development on an earnings call with analysts.
The ban of Chinese apps, including short video apps like TikTok, Likee and Vigo, has also benefited Snapchat just like all the multimedia entertainment companies working in this domain. However, this is not the sole reason for Snapchat’s success.
Last quarter, Snap Inc CEO Even Spiegel had announced that Snapchat had doubled its userbase in India since last year, all thanks to the changes in the competitive landscape and the deals it stuck with local celebrities, media companies, and mobile carriers. In 2018, Snapchat had partnered with 10 Indian media brands to add more local content.
He claimed that the platform has debuted a re-engineered android app designed for India along with other emerging markets, in April 2019. This version was combined with a localised version of its content discovery platform Discover in November 2018 helped the platform boost. According to media reports, nearly 40 Mn (4 Cr) people had watched a show from the tab.
In April, Spiegel had spoken about Snapchat’s plan to invest more in the social media platform to enhance its capabilities specifically for India. “One of the things that we’ve seen really work well there has been releasing custom and culturally relevant augmented reality experiences and increasingly more content,” he added.
Snap Inc’s CFO Derek Andersen, in the previous quarter, also noted, “We see a significant opportunity to continue to grow our community as we further invest in localisation of our product through language support, local content, and marketing partnerships across a variety of geographies.”
The multimedia platform offers support for nine Indian languages including Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, and Punjabi among others. Moreover, Snapchat opened an office in Mumbai after witnessing a 40% increase in daily active users in the second quarter of 2019.
In May, Snap Inc managing director Nana Murugesan had said that Snapchat had more than 229 Mn users at the end of March 2020 quarter globally, noting an increase of 39 Mn users. This is a 20% increase year-on-year.
