We’ve been reporting on the burgeoning short-video apps market in India, where TikTok’s ongoing ban has created the space for a flurry of local apps to get very popular very quickly, as well as Instagram Reels – explored in an article last week – and YouTube Shorts.
There are stats for individual companies. Moj had more than 160 million monthly active users in July; rival Josh had 115 million in August; and MX TakaTak was doing more than a billion daily video views as long ago as September 2020, for example. Now consultancy firm RedSeer has published some estimates on the overall market.
The company estimates that short-form video will soon be the second biggest ‘platform’ by time spent in India, behind only Facebook and Google properties. The methodology is a little fuzzy here: we’re not sure if Reels and YouTube Shorts are counted in the first or second category.
RedSeer also estimates that there are now around 240 million short-video users in India – around 40% of smartphone owners – but it predicts that this will grow to at least 575 million by 2025 (a “conservative” prediction). Cross-reference the 240 million figure with Josh and Moj’s latest stats, and it seems clear there is a lot of overlap between the various apps.
All this data is useful for the music industry, with Indian labels having been hawkish in striking deals with the various short-video apps – and threatening legal action if they are reluctant to come to the negotiating table.
RedSeer’s report also has some interesting data on India’s community of short-video influencers. It reckons that around 40m-45m people are creating content (rather than just watching it) on short-video apps, and that around 14 million of those are ‘influencers’ – a definition including anyone with more than 1,000 followers.
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