India has more than half a billion internet users. The market with internet penetration is growing exponentially, with mobiles leading the race. Seeing numbers like these, tech giants like Amazon, Uber, and Instagram have already invested billions of dollars in the country. Despite being a late entrant in the Indian digital market, Snapchat too finally woke up to the enormous potential in the nation’s social media industry. So, in a bid to grow its user base, Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, looked beyond the west and into India in 2019.
The social media app allows users to share photos with friends and family, for a specific period of time. After it is over, the content automatically disappears. It offers different filters and lenses, many of which are augmented and reality-enabled. Looking to further unleash the potential of the Indian market, Snap chief strategy officer Jared Grusd told The Information, “Snap is seeing ‘extraordinary growth’ in India, both in terms of bringing new users and getting existing ones to use the app more.” Over the course of the interview, he also agreed that this was a big change for the company that previously paid little attention to India, and instead focused on markets like the US or Western Europe.
Previous Comments on Indian Market
However not long before, in 2017, Snapchat’s CEO Evan Spiegel allegedly made a disparaging comment about how he felt that India is “too poor” to seriously consider expanding the app’s user database. This came after an employee raised concern over the app’s slow growth in a market like India, to which Spiegel supposedly cut him in mid-sentence and said, “This app is only for rich people. I don’t want to expand in poor countries like India and Spain.”
The comment obviously resulted in a lot of negative publicity as it garnered criticism from users across social media platforms. The company then officially responds to the story with a spokesperson releasing this statement, “This is ridiculous. Obviously, Snapchat is for everyone! It’s available worldwide to download for free. Those words were written by a disgruntled former employee. We are grateful for our Snapchat community in India and around the world.”
In the interview with The Information, Grusd told that Snap had a growing advertising business in India. Though he didn’t delve into details about the strategies the company took to increase its audience in India, he said Snap was focused on growing “organically and naturally” in International regions.
How Snapchat Expanded its Business in India?
It’s 2020 now, and Snapchat has more than doubled its user base in India. Spiegel attributed this growth to the company’s investment in localization and improving the performance of its app to make services more accessible across the world. In August 2019, Snapchat opened its first office in India with Mumbai as its base. The platform looked to building a local team to understand Indian Audiences better. During the launch, Grusd said,
“We believe that building a team locally will allow us to create the best possible experience for local Snapchatters. We continue to expand our strategic partnerships with regional media companies add more community content, and work with local content creators.”
So, Snapchat partnered up with established brands in the Indian economy like Pepsi, OnePlus, and Cadbury. The company is tied up with local content creators as well, across the social media spectrum including sports, fashion, news, beauty, and entertainment to strengthen their content to suit Indian audiences better. The photo-messaging app collaborated with IPL, Lakme Fashion Week, launched a SnapKit partnership with music streaming apps like Saavn and Gaana. In April last year, it debuted a re-engineered Android app designed for emerging markets like India, along with a localized version of its content discovery platform Discover in November 2018.
The app added support for nine Indian languages including Kannada, Tamil, Telegu, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, and Punjabi among others. To aid their growth, Snap also engaged with creators in the country through various initiatives, including conducting workshops to make them aware of how to benefit with the help of new technologies like augmented reality, to build more culturally relevant experience for Indian users. Across all initiatives, the augmented reality remains a fundamental way the app engages with its users.
“We see a significant opportunity to continue to grow our community as we further invest in localization of our product through language support, local content, and marketing partnerships across a variety of geographies,” said chief financial officer Derek Anderson in May of this year.
As of now, India is the second-largest market for the ephemeral messaging app after the United States with over 28.2 million users. Snapchat’s daily active user base (DAU) in India increased by a whopping 120 percent. It reported having a DAU base of 229 million at the end of March 2020. With its brilliant strategy on capitalizing the tremendous potential Indian market displayed, Snapchat has undoubtedly become a big name among social media apps popular in the country.
Written By - Radhika Rathi
Edited By - Vaibhav Sharma
Social