Social media giant Meta’s revenues in India crossed $2 billion for the first time during the year ending March 2022. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram, reported gross ad revenue of ₹16,189 crore growing at a year-on-year (y-o-y) rate of 74 per cent.
In the previous year, revenues for Meta had grown by 41 per cent y-o-y in comparison. Meta also reported a profit of ₹300 crore, growing 132 per cent y-o-y as per numbers filed with the Registrar of Companies.
Sources close to the company told businessline the growth was spurred on by Indians rapidly embracing digitisation in the aftermath of the pandemic, especially as Meta’s bet on video format, Instagram and small business played well.
These numbers come even as Facebook’s first-ever quarterly drop in daily users in February 2022 and its finance chief identified higher mobile data costs as a unique obstacle slowing down growth in India, its biggest market. Internal research leaks also suggested that users especially women were shunning the network worried about safety and privacy.
Instagram in particular has delivered for Meta, emerging as a leading platform in contribution towards ad cents and growth of the business.
‘Reels’ growth
Meta recently completed two years for the short video format, “reels” which has emerged as a major growth frontier for the social media company.
Ajit Mohan, VP and MD, Meta noted in a recent interview with businessline that the company saw massive growth in reels as Meta’s biggest bet in short-form videos has played off extremely well in the Indian market.
Meta’s next bet is business communications through their messaging service Whatsapp, where the company has rolled out novel features including P2P payments, and its recently announced partnership with JioMart to bring end-to-end shopping experience for consumers.
This novel project has only been launched in India. Thus, the social media giant is seeking further monetisation opportunities to drive profitability from its messaging platform as well.
