Snap hits 100 million monthly users in India

Snap Inc., which houses Snapchat, has hit 100 million monthly users in India for the first time, the US-based company announced on Wednesday adding that its consistent localisation efforts helped in achieving this milestone.

This has also resulted in an increase of net new advertisers by 70% in 2020 in India, the Santa Monica, California-based social media major said. It does not disclose India specific revenue from advertisements yet, but the advertisers are spread across sectors like FMCG, ecommerce, entertainment, video streaming, mobile wallets and others.

“We have made significant investments to localise the Snapchat experience for the Indian community. We have added culturally relevant content, developed highly active and creative local creator communities, and invested in local products, marketing initiatives, and language support,” said Evan Spiegel, cofounder and CEO, Snap.

After hitting the new milestone, Snap is doubling down on commerce in India and has inked several partnerships with leading platforms like Flipkart, Zomato and others.

Snap said it has entered into a strategic partnership with ecommerce marketplace Flipkart, to develop innovative AR (augmented reality) experiences for online shopping. “This will be an India-first ecommerce partnership for Snap, and Snap’s camera kit will be an integral part of Flipkart’s “camera storefront”. Through this partnership, shoppers will be able to begin their shopping and ecommerce engagement journey through Snapchat AR, making the process easy from the comfort of their homes,” the company said.

Snap is also enabling virtual try-ons for Snapchatters with platforms like Sugar Cosmetics and MyGlamm besides inking a partnership with Zomato as well. Snap Map, which serves as a personal map to each Snapchatter’s surroundings, connecting people and places, will enable users to access restaurant information and be able to place food orders right from their personal map on Snapchat.

Snap’s move to offer increasingly more local content to the Indian community has helped it further as its “Discover” content section has 70 local Indian channels across news, fitness, fashion, entertainment and comedy, publishing premium content on Snap in 2021—a jump of over 200% over Q2 of 2020.

This has led to total daily time spent by Snapchatters in India watching shows and publisher content increasing by 150% year-over-year (Q2 of 2021 vs. Q2 2020), with over 125 million unique viewers having watched a show in India on Snapchat.

“We will continue to anchor our efforts around celebrating local culture and talent, while empowering, growing, and providing resources for our community of Indian creators,” Spiegel added.

Bobby Murphy, cofounder and CTO, Snap, said AR is at the core of Snapchat’s offerings in India. “Our efforts to stay culturally relevant and offer unique AR experiences have resonated with 100 million Indian Snapchatters. We have worked towards empowering students and youth with essential AR Skills through workshops and lensathons,” said Murphy.

“We aim to partner with more local creators in India to grow the number of incredible experiences available to Snapchatters. At Snap, our intent is to make AR more accessible, useful and practical than ever before.”