Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, while unveiling the social media guidelines last month, put forward some interesting figures. As per the figures, 39% of the Indian population is on WhatsApp, or 76% of its digital users.
A 2019 estimate by the World Bank and the United States Census Bureau put Indian population at 136.64 crore while the data statistics platform Statista put the number of internet users in India in 2020 at 69.7 million.
Likewise, YouTube is used by 33% of the Indian population, or 64% of the Indian internet users; Facebook is used by 30% of the Indian population, or 59% of the Indian internet users; Instagram is used by 15% of the Indian population, or 30% of the Indian internet users; and Twitter is used by 1.3% of the Indian population, or 2.5% of the Indian internet users.
So, a huge proportion of Indians on the internet are using social networks and the number is expected to rise manifold especially after the Covid-19 pandemic that has made lives almost sedentary and so hooked to the homes and holed up to the internet and its social media platforms.
That means a rising business scale for these global tech giants when they scale up their commercial activities further in India, especially for Google and Facebook and the other social media platforms they operate.
Google almost owns the search engine market share in India with 98.87% market share and acts as a marketing tool for people based on their search history and the billions of search queries daily on it make it a perfect marketing tool.
Google owned YouTube is the most preferred advertising option among OTT players as it is also the most consumed OTT platform in India says a report by MICA and Communication Craft.
Google also owns the platform on which almost all of our mobiles run in India. As per Statista, in 2020, Android, the Google owned mobile phone operating system, had a market share of 95.23%.
If we talk about Facebook, India is the largest user market for its WhatsApp and Facebook platforms. Though it earns very less when compared to its global earning, its India revenue saw year-on-year growth of 43% in 2019-20.
WhatsApp may not be earning anything from its India operations so far but the Facebook entity has already started its WhatsApp payment option in the country and it might be the next big thing to rake in money.
According to the RBI data, digital payments have seen a growth of 55.1% between 2015-16 and 2019-20. During the lockdown in 2020, they saw a record high. For 2020-21, the Government of India has set a target of Rs 4,630 crore as digital payments and expects it to be easily surpassed.
And the future looks even brighter. India is expected to have $1 trillion in online payments by 2023 says an analysis by Credit Suisse Group AG and as per different reports (Bloomberg), Google and Facebook have applied for license to be part of India’s retail payments and settlement systems.
In 2019, globally, Facebook’s Instagram earned more ad revenue than Google’s YouTube. Instagram’s $20 billion was significantly higher than YouTube’s $15.1 billion and it already has become a part of social media presence in India like Facebook or YouTube in defining lifestyle and preference options.
And a country which will have around one billion internet users by 2025 with the cheapest internet connection in the world is going to be the best growing option once their markets in the US and Europe get saturated.
So, even if the government comes up with a comprehensive set of laws to regulate the social media sector, that was largely unregulated so far, they cannot ignore the rules and guidelines put forward.
Read all the Latest News, Breaking News and Coronavirus News here
Comments
0 comment