As Snapchat reached the milestone of 100 million users monthly in India recently, the company is focusing on doubling down its localisation and partnership efforts to further grow its user base.
BusinessLine spoke with Nana Murugesan, Managing Director, International Markets, Snap Inc, about the company’s strategy in India moving forward, including partnerships, focus on augmented reality (AR), its localisation efforts and monetisation strategy for creators.
Excerpts:
How has Snapchat evolved in India?
Reaching more than 100 million users is a major milestone for us. Our daily active users (DAU) growth over the last seven quarters has been more than 100 per cent.
We have expanded since we started our India office just two years back. We focused on hiring leaders across different types of functions. We now have many different functions in India, and are building teams. We hope that the India office and our investments in the country mushroom. That’s the word I want to use. Because as we invest in different functions, each of the functions starts growing. And then the sub-function starts growing. And so it’s so nice to see some of the early stages of that mushrooming happening, and we hope that that will happen even more in 2022.
What will Snap’s focus in India be moving forward?
You’re going to see us double down on localisation efforts and on partnership efforts, across platform partners, mobile partners and content partners. You’re going to see a lot more activity on our number of devices. We will have significantly higher pre-installations next year vis-a-vis this year.
There are three types of partnerships that we’ve been focused on. One is platform partnerships, which is really focusing on developers. It is where we take some of the best things that are available in our app, and then share them with developers so that this can be integrated into other apps, too. Another type of partnership that we are very excited about is mobile partnerships. The work that we are doing with OEMs and telcos is directly contributing to our growth
Another area of partnership is content, whether it’s how we work with partners, which is publishers or creating originals, or how we engage with creators through our user-generated platform Spotlight.
And finally, we are also thinking about how to bring AR to India at a nation-wide level. AR proliferation across India at scale is an area that is very important to us.
You’re going to see us make a concerted effort around nationwide activities such as digital skilling, different types of communities, etc.
What is the focus of Snap’s OEM strategy in India?
Snapchat is a pure mobile app. Which means we are available on smartphones. So it’s really important for us to focus on OEMs.
India is the only market where we have partnerships with all the top OEMs. We are pre-installed in more than 100 million smartphones right now.
We have two types of OEM strategies. One is what we call on Snapchat OEM strategy. And the other is what we call off Snapchat OEM strategy.
The on Snapchat OEM strategy is all about how we take the Snapchat app and make it better. Some of the things that we do are at a very basic level … we work on performance optimisation. India has so many different types of smartphones, so many different types of specs. So we want to make sure that our app works well and we are optimised across the different types of devices and brands. We’ve also started doing things like lock-screen integrations, which we recently announced with Google and Pixel.
Another aspect of our on Snapchat OEM strategy is free installs, which is preloading so that when people buy a smartphone and turn it on, Snapchat is available. In India, we are working with all the major OEM device makers, including Samsung, Oppo and Vivo.
The last part of our on Snapchat OEM strategy is working with our smartphone OEMs. To strengthen our core value proposition. We are going all the way to the lock screen level of integration so that when one of our users wants to share a Snap, he or she can do it straight from the lock screen.
The off Snapchat OEM strategy, as the name indicates, is when someone doesn’t have Snapchat on their phone, and maybe they’ve not yet tried it, maybe they don’t have it. But the good example of it is when you buy a phone like the upcoming JioPhone Next or when you buy a Samsung A series or an M series, on opening the phone’s camera, you see Snapchat lenses integrated with it directly, right as a native camera integration. So, this is a good example of not even having the Snapchat app, but having our augmented reality technology, our lenses integrated directly into the native camera of phones.
Through a combination of on Snapchat, and off Snapchat OEM strategy, we hope to drive our growth and also awareness and proliferation of augmented reality in the market.
How will Snap benefit from its partnership with Google for the Jio Phone Next?
We have this partnership with Jio Phone Next and Google. So when you buy a Jio Phone Next and you open the native camera, you will see that the Snapchat lenses are integrated through our partnership with Google. Google and Jio have worked on an optimised version of Android for the phone.
So that’s a great way for Jio Phone Next users to experience augmented reality and experience a part of Snapchat’s augmented reality technology.
After reaching 100 million users on a monthly basis, our ambition is to do it on a much bigger scale. We feel like we’re just getting started in India. It’s really important for us to work with different types of OEMs, at different price points. Jio Phone Next is an inspiring and exciting product that’s aligned with our strategy to capture a broader base in India.
What are Snap’s plans for content partnerships?
As for content, the daily timespan that Snapchatters watch has increased 150 per cent year-over-year and more than 125 million unique viewers have watched a show on Snapchat.
In terms of publishers, we are partnering with broadcasters and media companies and are constantly increasing the breadth and depth of local content to the Indian community.
We have been constantly increasing the number of local Indian channels. We are also on-boarding content from some of India’s biggest entertainment channels, including Sony and Zee TV.
On the other side, which is the original series, which is all about fresh, original, local content that’s just available on Snapchat, we’ve commissioned over 120 episodes of new content for 2022.
We will continue investing in the creator community and launch exclusive shows with top creators.
So we are both working with publishers, helping them bring their existing content to Snapchat in a uniquely Snapchat way, as well as doing exclusive and original content through our original strategy. We are going to significantly accelerate both. All the things that we do on that front, we feel will significantly help increase our engagement in the market.
Sports is another key vertical that we are focusing on in content
What are your plans in terms of monetisation for creators? How has the monetisation aspect of Spotlight been for creators?
When we talk to creators, it’s not just about growing their audience. Once they grow their audience, they want to monetise the audience. It’s really important for that growth flywheel, as I call it, which is, they do a lot of work. They could grow the audience, and then if we can help them monetise the audience, it is going to motivate them to continue doing great work. And then the growth flywheel is going to be a win-win for all the parties supported.
So that’s just the framework and the strategy.
There are two specific areas that we recently announced. One is Gifting, where fans of these creators can actually give gifts to the creators. This is monetary gifting.
The second way we are enabling monetisation is through the Creator Marketplace, where brands can connect with creators directly, and pay them to produce branded content with 100 per cent of the transaction going directly to the creator. This is one area where AR creators in India are currently participating. But then we will be rolling out to the broader set of creators very soon.
So the first one is to connect fans to creators. The second one is to connect brands to creators.
The Indian Snap Star community has grown extensively with 300 new Snap Stars since 2020.
Since its launch in India in March 2021, the daily Spotlight story view time has quadrupled. Spotlight is rolling out globally and already reaches more than 125 million monthly active users. We continue to offer millions per month to reward Snapchatters for their creativity. To date, over 5,400 Creators have earned more than $130 million dollars globally.
It is a step-by-step process. First, we find product-market fit. So even with Spotlight, that’s what we were doing. The second step is to drive hyper-growth. And then the third step, we go into more of these monetisation areas.
All these monetisation areas are the next thing we are going to focus on.
What are Snap’s efforts in terms of privacy and security of users?
At a higher level, we are extremely committed to this and are very sensitive about it. And, from the beginning, we have been by design a very private platform.
The safety of our community is taken incredibly seriously. We take a number of measures, especially for the ages of like, 13, to 17, so that they have an age-appropriate experience of apps. For example, settings for any user under the age of 18, are set to private by default, location-sharing is off by default. And so, by default, we’ve made it all private.
Another thing we do is use age dating technology, to prevent minors from viewing age regulated content. We restrict any kind of ad targeting so that underage users are not exposed to certain things through ads. We also do not allow Snapchatters between the ages of 13 to 17 to alter their birthday and also do not allow Snapchatters under the age of 18 to create a public profile.
We recently launched a feature called Friend checkup, which means that Snapchatters can review their friend list and make sure that they actually know their contacts.
These are just a few things that we are doing to ensure that, specifically for teenagers, the 13 to 17 age group, we are introducing features and making settings in a way that keeps the community safe.
