One in six Indians spends 1.2 hours a day scrolling through Shorts, Reels & more such

• An average user spends as much as 1.2 hours a day scrolling through short form videos.
• As many as 65-75% users of home grown short format video users are from Tier 2+ cities.
• Users are also happy with these platforms as 58% surveyed say that they increased SFV usage in the last six months.
• Content relevance across India's SFV platforms typically falls within the 80% range.
  

Over 250 million Indians subscribe to short-form videos across Indian home-grown apps like DailyHunt, Josh, Josh, Moj, Roposo and more. This does not include popular international platforms like Instagram Reels or Youtube Shorts. An average user spends as much as 1.2 hours a day scrolling through short-form videos, says a recent report by Redseer.

Interestingly, as much as 65-75% of the users that are hooked onto these primarily user generated content (UGC) platforms, are from Tier 2+ cities. “A sizable user base of these (home grown) platforms reside in Tier 2+ and rural regions and over 100 million users of these platforms transact online,” Redseer said.

The trigger for the growth of home grown apps in India, is the banning of TikTok that made them grow. “Over 58% of the survey respondents reported an increase in their SFV usage over the past six months, indicating significant user satisfaction with these platforms,” the report added.

What’s keeping Bharat hooked on them? High-quality creator base, localised and regional content the report says adding that platforms too launched creator programs, fostered collaborations with celebrities, and attracted and onboarded local talent.

There’s an avalanche of original content across genres, languages and more hitting these platforms. An analysis of real-time feed data (around 1,20,000 videos per year) indicates that the original content percentage has increased significantly with over 99% original content on every refresh during Jan-Aug 2023 compared to 92% original content in 2022, Redseer says.

We know what Short you’ll like

That’s only one part of the story. The other part is that algorithms are at play to keep people hooked on these platforms by suggesting the right kind of Short or Reel to the user that’s most keen on it.

Content is fresh, not repetitive but the platform also knows which type of cat video to suggest, or the right joke that will land on the right person’s phone. “These platforms employ robust recommendation engines, ensuring a consistent stream of fresh content with each feed refresh,” the report adds.

They tag the creators in, and use in-house machine learning (ML) and natural language processing (NLP) algorithms to ensure accurate genre tagging. Content relevance across India's SFV platforms typically falls within the 80% range. It means if there is a video that’s being made in any corner of the world – your app will bring it to the screens.