Video-sharing website YouTube, owned by search giant Google, sees huge opportunity for growth in India with increasing penetration of mobile and Internet and aims to reach every mobile Internet user in the country.
“YouTube is our big bet in India. With increasing mobile and Internet penetration in the country, we see India as a country with huge potential for growth of YouTube. In the last few years, we have seen YouTube user base double every year” YouTube Director, Content Partnerships & Operations, APAC (Asia Pacific), Gautam Anand told The Hindu .
The website, which recently completed seven years of operations in India, gets about 60 million unique users a month.
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“We are very pleased with the trajectory of YouTube user base and creators ecosystem in India. Mobile Internet user base is growing at a very rapid pace, and we are already seeing over one-third of viewership come from mobile. Our aim is to reach every mobile Internet user in the country, and make YouTube their daily destination for video content,” he added.
Interestingly, Indian content creators rank among the top five in the world in terms of viewership.
Pointing out some interesting video watching trends in India, Mr. Anand said India was a market with versatility of content.
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“The wide diversity of content, a young Internet audience and language content growth make India a very special market,” he added.
Bollywood and music are the most watched categories. About 63 per cent of Internet-savvy Indians using YouTube watch music videos and about half of them watch TV shows and film trailers.
How to videos of Cooking, Tech blogging, beauty, and health and fitness are also gaining a strong growth. In addition, educational videos and more recently political satire are seeing an upswing.
While the top eight metros contributed to bulk of the users, rapid growth now was coming from smaller cities, he said.