Local languages and videos are redefining India’s content apps
Digital content businesses in India are considering video content in native languages as the real disruptor
Online consumption of videos is surging as internet users move away from their TV sets. About 80% of global internet consumption will be video content by 2019, predicts a KPMG-Google report on local languages. Further, video viewership in India is expected to be dominated by regional language users, and expected to touch $536 million users by 2021. The Indian consumer today spends about 50-60% of the average time on Hindi videos, followed closely by 35-43% on regional content videos with only 5-7% on English. According to media and entertainment company Hotstar, the growth in smaller cities—with less than 1million population—outpaced the growth of the metro cities.
It’s this context that digital content businesses in India are considering video content in native languages as the real disruptor.
“The single biggest opportunity on the Indian Internet is ‘Local Language’ and the future certainly lies in winning the regional language audiences," said Umang Bedi, president, Dailyhunt—a Bengaluru-based news and local language content application.
Dailyhunt hit 100 million monthly active users (MAUs) in May compared with the 250 million MAUs of Google and Facebook and 225 million MAUs of YouTube. “We are reinventing ourself—from a content-focused app to one focused on the next billion users coming online. And our strategy is to build the largest social content entertainment and news platform in vernacular language, using our patented artificial intelligence, machine learning-based algorithm that is moving to block chain." The technology enables smart curation of content and tracks user preferences to deliver real-time, personalised content and notifications.
“Unlike a social network, there is no social graph—we build a feed around your content graph, which is a much more sophisticated algorithm," says Bedi. The platform has seen a high engagement of 25 minutes,with page views crossing 8 billion per month, claims Bedi. The app enjoys 14 million video views per day and the focus will be on revamping its news feed to look like current social media where videos (with a local flavour) will autoplay.
Also Read: Indians spending more time watching online videos
Dailyhunt’s competitors include UC News, NewsDog and In Shorts. While the app enjoys a marketshare of 30%, the others are far behind with News Dog at 5%, UC News 10% and In Shorts at 15%, according to data from App Annie.
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