If you wanted any confirmation that TikTok is one of the fastest growing apps in India, it is here. The numbers are out and they suggest that the short video social media app has clocked 5.5 billion hours through posting of videos by Indians alone, in the year 2019. To put this in perspective, the figure stood at 900 million hours in 2018, which represents a jump of 600%.
It comes as no surprise since TikTok is known to be quite popular among different age groups in the country, but the figures, when analysed, tell a deeper story. There has been a 90% increase in the number of monthly active users (MAUs) to reach 81 million. The only market where TikTok enjoys a higher popularity is China, its homeland. The incremental number of monthly actual users in the case of Facebook stood at 15% and Instagram at 40%.
Byte Dance is the Chinese company that owns TikTok and its valuation is at a mammoth $75 billion. The app is trying to monetise some of its features by tying up with music companies where videos on demand can be played through a subscription model a la Spotify. There is a temptation to compare TikTok with Facebook and the blistering pace of growth TikTok has recorded cannot be matched by Facebook even. The year 2019 saw the TikTok app being downloaded 323 times both on the Android Play Store and the App Store of Apple. Facebook did not get even 50% of this.
All these statistics are from App Annie data.
The uptake in all this is that for TikTok, like many other businesses that have their footprints across the world, India is a key market. It is reported that the average time spent by users of the short video app in India is higher than that in 11 countries put together.
The app has been able to use technology very effectively in offering better user experience in viewing the videos on mobile screens. The coming days may see a more aggressive TikTok wooing customers in the Indian market.