Desi rivals of TikTok: Video sharing space is getting more lucrative for made-in-India platforms

With the call to promote made-in-India products getting louder, MyGov, the citizen engagement platform of the Government of India, has teamed up with an Indian video-sharing platform called Roposo.

On joining Roposo, MyGov CEO Abhishek Singh said the video-sharing platform is helping it expand its outreach and engagement related to COVID-19, especially with regional audiences. MyGov is happy to be a part of a made-in-India social media platform, Singh said.

Just like MyGov, the swadeshi sentiment is encouraging more people to be on Indian social media platforms like Roposo.

In fact, Roposo, which was seeing strong traction on the platform due to the coronavirus situation, is seeing higher engagement due to the anti-China sentiments.

“Owing to the coronavirus lockdown, people had a lot more time. So, watch time increased. The number of creators has doubled in the last three months, just before the anti-China trend started. But in the last few days we saw 5x increase,” said Mayank Bhangadia, Founder, Roposo.

At present, around 200,000 users are creating 700,000 videos daily.

He said that in terms of traction on the platform, the bigger push is coming from the 'Made in India' sentiment.

In June, the frequency of existing users returning to the app jumped by 40 percent which has led to an increase in the daily time spent as well.

Apart from Roposo being an Indian platform, what is setting it apart from the many short video sharing apps available?

Bhangadia highlighted its content moderation policy and transparency for creators in terms of monetisation.

“We have strong AI mechanism which automatically detects content that is not safe for families, and 90 percent of the work is done by this layer. We also have a multi-lingual team, which moderates all content,” he said.

Giving an example, he said: “There was an act in a short video where a person has killed a rapist who raped a minor. So, there was debate that the person took the law into his own hands but for a good cause; but we still took the video off our platform as we do not allow such content.”

Coming to revenue sharing with creators, Bhangadia said Roposo closely follows what kind of content consumers like, and based on that, it has targeted ads on the platform.

“This helps us share revenue systematically with our creators no matter big or small. For example, if your video gets 10,000 views you will get 10,000 Roposo coins for that content which can be redeemed from one of the wallets (Paytm wallet),” he said.

“The next stage for us is charging for videos. For example, if you want to watch a how-to-play-guitar tutorial, a user can pay micro amounts and that money will go to the creator as well as Roposo.”

More desi rivals for TikTok

As many Indian short video sharing apps such as Roposo and Bolo Indya are seeing a surge in engagement thanks to the Aatmanirbhar Bharat movement, it looks like the time is right to launch another such platform.

This is probably why Zee5 is all geared up to launch HyperShorts, a user-generated short video content platform in July.

“With HyperShorts, our existing users will have a new way to interact and this will also open up a new set of audiences for us,” said Rajneel Kumar, Expansion Projects and Head of Products, Zee5.

He said that HyperShorts will be available on Zee5.

“For a new user, we personalise content in terms of geography and language. This way the platform will discover programmed and HyperShorts content within the user’s browsing experience. Also, as you start consuming content we have invested significantly in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and recommendation engine which is geared up for hyper-personalisation,” he noted.

As for subscribers for HyperShorts, Kumar is aiming for the 80 million monthly active users of Zee5 along with new users.

In terms of advertising on the platform, Kumar said, “We have been working on advertising-technology side. We are working on self-serve platform that will let the brands pick the kind of advertisement they want to do, the audience they want to target and the influencers they want to partner with. This can be done directly by agencies or even SMEs.”