Armed With Over 150 Mn Users, Gaana HotShots Joins Short Video Fight

Times Internet-owned music streaming platform Gaana is muscling its way into the short videos space with HotShots, its take on TikTok, built for Indian content creators.

The company said that Gaana HotShots will offer emerging and established Influencers an opportunity to migrate to an Indian platform and build a massive audience. Clearly, Gaana is looking to fill the massive hole left for influencers by TikTok’s ban. With over 150 Mn users, Gaana is by far the biggest player to enter the short video space in the short time since the ban on the 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok. 

Hotshots features challenges as well as musical, comedy and dance performances by HotShot influencers, celebs and international artists. The app claims to offer the scale and the infrastructure to reach a massive audience that thrives on digital entertainment, given that these are engaged users on the core music streaming platform. 

Prashan Agarwal, CEO, Gaana said, “Our home-grown entertainment super app is ready to serve as the country’s go-to destination for entertainment across music, podcasts, short viral videos and buzz, offering aspiring Indians the power to become influencers in their own right with Gaana’s world-class live streaming & short video capabilities.”

Besides HotShots, Gaana has an extensive music library featuring more than 45 Mn songs across Bollywood, International and 30 Indic languages including Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi, Kannada, Punjabi, Malayalam, English, Bhojpuri, Rajasthani, Bengali, Assamese & Oriya. 

Will Gaana HotShots Outmuscle Chingari, Mitron & Co?

According to the OTT Audience Measurement Insights, Gaana is the largest audio streaming platform in India by market share, dominating 30% of the Indian market. The report came a month after Gaana announced that it had crossed over 150 Mn MAUs in December 2019. 

Agarwal has earlier said that Gaana will manage to gain over 165 Mn monthly active users (MAUs) by the end of 2020 and the number would grow to 225 Mn MAUs by the end of 2021. Agarwal added that the company is expected to reach over 600 Mn MAUs by the end of 2023. Agarwal added that Gaana will have 6% to 7 % paid subscribers, accounting for 40 Mn such users subscribers when it hits the 600 Mn mark.

For now, Gaana generates 65% of its total revenues through ads. However, the company is expecting ad and subscription revenue to balance out by 2023, despite over 90% of the user base being unpaid subscribers by that year. 

With the government’s ban on 59 Chinese apps, short video platform TikTok has been hurt the most due to its position in the Indian market. India was not only the largest market for TikTok, but the app also enjoyed a dominant status over other short video platforms. Gaana is best poised to take its place with HotShots thanks to its huge user base that is likely to have an overlap with TikTok as well. 

According to an AppAnnie report, Indian users spent over 5.5 Bn hours on TikTok in 2019, noting a whooping hike from 900 Mn hours in 2018. The number of monthly active users (MAUs) on TikTok increased by 90% year-on-year (YoY) to 81 Mn as of December 2019. 

Since the ban, several TikTok clones have flooded the market. Indian app Chingari has crossed over 1 Mn (10 Lakh) downloads on Google Play Store. Mitron has recorded over 17 Mn users. Further, Trell recorded 12 Mn downloads while Roposo recorded over 10 Mn users and Sharechat’s Moj app garnered over 10 Mn downloads in six days.