With 225 Mn MAUs, YouTube claims to reach 80% Internet users in India

When there was no Facebook, Hotstar or Netflix, there was Youtube for video content consumption in India. After ten years of launch in India, Google-owned video platform has reached 225 million mark in monthly active users logged in from mobile phones alone, according to Rajan Anandan, VP, Google India.

Anandan was speaking on Youtube Brandcast 2018. He recalled that when Youtube was launched in 2008, there were only 50 million Internet users in India. At present, the country has over 400 million Internet users and it's slated to touch 500 million by June this year. 

He also said that YouTube reaches 85 per cent of the engaged Internet users in the 18 years and above age-group.

Shedding light on the journey of Youtube, which matured from providing short-form of videos to a very high-quality variety of content, Anandan highlighted that the platform now provides music, movies, trailers, web series and TV content, among others.

Besides, affordable data, increasing penetration of smartphones and affordability of high-quality content has changed the landscape of the media and entertainment industry in a very fundamental. This has helped the company to become one of the fastest-growing Internet platforms in the country.

Internet user base in India is expanding at a fast pace. By 2020, India will have 650 million Internet users. At a current growth rate, over 500 million Internet users will consume video content in the country.

India is a more engaged market compared with the rest of the world for YouTube, where more than 65 percent of the viewers subscribe to channels. Interestingly, close to 60 percent of the viewership is clocked by non-metros. Besides, 90 percent of all video consumption happens in local languages, according to Google.

Besides, 7 out of 10 viewers watch ads with the audio turned on. The ad viewability on Youtube is about 95 per cent.

Fight for the burgeoning streaming market in India

In the past few years, there has been a significant rise in video platforms (over-the-top platforms). According to a Hotstar’s India Watch Report 2018 - consumption of online videos has registered five-fold growth over the past one year in India.

Unlike past (during 2012-16) when short format videos used to attract more eyeballs, viewership of long-form videos (exceeding 20 minutes) had driven 96 per cent of overall usage. Besides Hotstar, Voot, Amazon Prime Video, Sony Liv, Jio (with Saavn, EROS and ALTBalaji) and Netflix are the top OTT platforms in the country.

In 2016, global online video streaming leaders including Netflix and Amazon Prime had made their entry into Indian market while Voot (Viacom 18), OZee (Zee TV) and ALT Balaji are also eyeing to grab a slice of fast-growing video consumption.

With OTT offerings becoming hot business proposition, Alibaba is reportedly placing its bet on entertainment-centric short video space (less than 20 minutes). To tap burgeoning video consumption, Facebook also contemplating to launch its original video offering ‘watch’ by March this year.

While Hotstar has the pole position in video streaming market, Voot is the second largest player with 22 million monthly subscribers base.

The development was reported by Firstpost via IANS.