Indian short-video making apps led by Josh, Moj, MX Takatak and Roposo have brought back 97% of TikTok's user base in the country onto their platforms, largely from small cities and towns, a new report showed on Thursday.
Indian short-form apps have also retained 67% of the TikTok era users and have onboarded around 30-35% new users over the past year, according to the report. This has been attributed to increased supplier push and aggressive marketing by platforms.
According to the study by Bengaluru-based consulting firm RedSeer, Josh leads both on influencer and user-end, driven by strong performance in the Hindi belt and Tier-2+ cities.
Moj has also been a strong gainer across consumer and business metrics, when compared to the last quarter. The growth has been driven by regional language markets especially the southern states.
On the other hand, Roposo has shown strong performance in Tier-1 cities compared to the smaller ones. MX Takatak led in the net promoter score (NPS) in the metro cities. The platform has held challenges and hashtag events similar to TikTok, to gain market share, the report added.
“The new users who are onboarded are largely from tier 2 cities. This trend is mostly driven by a stronger focus of platforms on vernacular content and ‘Bharat’ positioning. Overall, 60- 62% of the short form users are from Tier 2+ cities,” the study noted.
However, the time spent on the other hand has gradually increased, reaching 55% compared to June 2020. While Indian platforms have come a long way in the last few months, the Indian apps have more scope to improve their content quality and product experience, the report added.
The study said that 75% of current short-form video users will likely stick to these domestic apps and are unlikely to switch back to Chinese apps even if the ban was lifted.
With strong network effects, the user base is growing fast according to the report, fuelling ecosystem growth, leading to a large monetisation potential for both influencers and platforms. Elite influencers with more than 10 million followers have a monthly earning of around $20,000-40,000. Influencers with 1 million followers can earn upto $1000-2,500 monthly while budding creators with less than 1 million followers can earn $40-200 monthly, the report added.
“In less than one-year post-TikTok ban, Indian platforms have shown a strong V- shaped recovery, bouncing back to 100% 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 last few years,” said Ujjwal Chadhury, associate partner at RedSeer Consulting.