Twitter India Trends: Startups Rule Conversations, Web3 And Crypto Grab Eyeballs

Finance, fan subcultures and entrepreneurship emerged as the top trends on Twitter India last year, according to a recently released report by the microblogging platform.

The Twitter Trends 2022 report identified three major themes across domains — ‘Finance Goes Social’, ‘Fan Built Worlds’ and ‘Entrepreneurship Hits Peak Culture.’ 

The study found that discussions around financial literacy rose 185% year-on-year (YoY) in 2021. It also noted that discussion around finance surged 62% during the same period, adding that conversation around investments were increasingly becoming ‘commonplace’ on Twitter. 

Besides investing and trading, the platform also saw heavy impressions around conversations involving cryptocurrencies and decentralised finance. While topics related to financial literacy, fintech startups and equity got the lion’s share of interactions, conversations around Web3.0, ‘NFT+Bollywood’ and Bollycoin took centre stage as emerging topics last year.

The sudden spurt came as rising financial literacy and increasing internet penetration brought more and more people to the platform. As influencers burst onto the social media scene, more and more people hopped onto the Twitter bandwagon to learn from the experiences of others.

The year also saw stock markets achieving record highs. The markets rallied as the country saw a record number of initial public offerings (IPOs). 125 Indian companies listed on the bourses, raising over $18 Bn in capital last year. 

2021 also proved to be a watershed moment for the Web3.0 space. While NFTs went mainstream, adoption of them by Bollywood also contributed to the interest in the space. The period also saw crypto prices jump to a record high for most part of the year. As prices plummeted in the later part of 2021, cryptos continued to hit the headlines as users discussed the digital currencies at length and in great detail. 

Fan Subcultures On The Rise 

Meanwhile, Twitter continued to be the battleground of fan subcultures. While the overall discussions around fandoms in India grew 47% in 2021, conversations around cricket saw a massive jump of 55% YoY. 

Overall, cricket, anime and film discussions led the overall charts in terms of interactions last year. Mentions of Kollywood (Tamil cinema) rose 15% on a yearly basis in 2021, as tastes of Indian diversified away from national cinema, giving way to regional films. 

Niche conversations such as cosplaying and LARPing (live action role playing) also grew as Twitter users went online to share their experiences and passion about these themes. Superhero fandoms such as those around Marvel and DC also sparked some of the most interactive conversations online. 

As theatres remained shut for a good portion of 2021 last year, fans gathered online to ‘stan’ their favourite stars online. The pandemic-induced lockdown also saw the percolation of new trends and cultures online as urban users experienced different genres of films and music across languages. The ensuing result has seen the resurgence of K-Pop (South Korean pop) among younger teens. 

On similar lines, sporadic and largely online releases of superhero movies from Marvel and DC Comics also consolidated fandoms across groups as users took to Twitter to post their reviews and discuss the films. 

Startups Go Mainstream

“Having recently emerged as the third largest unicorn ecosystem in the world, startup culture in India is well and truly booming. Across the country, people are sharing their own experiences and even using memes to join in the conversation around this bustling sector. On Twitter, founders are building communities along with their own personal brand and inspiring a new, more diverse generation of budding entrepreneurs as they grow,” noted the report. 

2021 was a watershed moment in the history of Indian startups. Indian startups raised $42 Bn across 1,583 deals exceeding all expectations. India also minted 44 unicorns last year, thrusting the space into the consciousness of the Indian populace and embracing entrepreneurship as the new normal.

As a result, discussion around entrepreneurship went up 22% YoY last year, while interactions around female entrepreneurs surged 269%, on a YoY basis, in 2021. The spurt was largely led by memes and jokes around TV show Shark Tank India and hashtags such as #PeakBengaluru. 

The biggest push last year came from Shark Tank India, which premiered last year. The first season saw a volley of controversies, including the onset of the Ashneer Grover saga.

As Grover and BharatPe management sparred publicly, it was the Indian startup space that quietly drew the attention of the masses. Close on the heels of that, another judge Peyush Bansal also landed in a soup after he told one of the contestants, during the live show, to ‘stay away from chartered accountants.’ The fallout saw Bansal apologising for his statement. 

The biggest factor that ignited conversation around startups were Shark Tank India memes that went viral with their quirky humour and catchy dialogues. These dialogues made the show a pop culture phenomenon as the general public latched on to these conversations. These reasons ignited debates around startups and the allied ecosystem as Indians became more accustomed to the idea of doing and operating a business.

While topics such as ‘Social Change’, ‘Empowerment’, ‘Creators’, and ‘Influencer Owned Brands’ were key drivers of the trend, conversations around women-led startups and female founders also led the growth numbers. 

The results were tabulated after exploring billions of tweets to identify larger themes prevalent on the microblogging platform. Employing data and ‘cultural experts’, historical data patterns were analysed along with other variables to predict what trends would gain traction in the near future. 

Twitter: Fighting Its Own Battles

While the social platform did not reveal absolute numbers in the report, Twitter has been mired in its own set of controversies. While the billionaire Elon Musk has been locked in a tussle with Twitter management over his acquisition bid, the ensuing drama has reflected poorly on the company. 

According to internal documents accessed by Reuters recently, Twitter has been struggling to keep its most active users engaged. Despite accounting for less than 10% of monthly overall users yet generating 90% of all tweets, these ‘heavy tweeters’ have been in ‘absolute decline’ since the pandemic. 

The Reuters report also found that heavy users interested in not safe for work (NSFW) and cryptocurrency content have been growing. Interestingly, these heavy users account for nearly half of the platform’s global revenues and a shift towards porn and crypto renders them useless as advertisement consumers. 

Twitter has also been hit as a growing number of its users, especially in the younger demographic, are moving to rival platforms such as Instagram and Tiktok (outside India). However, India continues to be a big market for Twitter, accounting for the third largest number of users in the world at 23.6 Mn.