Decoding the sweet spot for short-form video space in India

When Beijing-based ByteDance’s TikTok was banned in India in mid-2020, many homegrown short-form video apps came into focus. The growing popularity of these platforms has provided a boost to the India’s creator economy. Be it entertainment content or live commerce, short video platforms have quickly evolved to cater to their audiences.

A panel discussion on day three of Voot presents vdonxtasia Week looked into the journey of some of these short video platforms, how they will create newer revenue streams for the creators, and the big trends in this space

Moderated by Vanita Kohli-Khandekar, contributing editor, Business Standard, the panel included Abhimanyu Radhakrishnan, managing director, Qyuki Digital Media; Mansi Jain, general manager and vice president, Roposo; Satya Raghavan, director, content partnerships, YouTube India; and Seher Bedi, head, Josh Studios.

In her initial remarks, Bedi pointed out that Josh Studios has always celebrated the landscape of talent in the country. “For us, it is about giving these creators, who are present in every nook and corner of the country, a platform to express themselves.”

She added that when JFlix (Josh’s film festival) was introduced, one worried about whether people would welcome the short video (filmmaking) format. But the brand decided to launch it in a big way and the film festival ended up receiving about a lakh entries.

Over the last two years, Roposo, the video-sharing social media platform, has mostly focused on the entertainment genre. But it gradually realised that entertainment can be combined with the shopping experiences of the consumers. From being purely intent-led, shopping has now moved on to being more fun-filled.

Jain shared, “At Roposo, we are combining entertainment with shopping. It is, indeed, exciting for the consumers and also gives a sustainable platform to the creators. Creative commerce is already big in other countries and that is what we are bringing to India.”

Initially, for Roposo’s monetisation model, advertising was the only mainstay. But the platform has now realised that there can be other avenues for the creators to build sustainable business models.

Speaking about YouTube Shorts, Raghavan said, “We love the short video format space. We have now come to know about some interesting insights of our creators. The format is beyond just entertainment and there are new types of creators that have come up in different verticals.”

Raghavan said that with short form videos, many creators get appreciated which, in turn, has a great impact on their lives. Most of them have also started to make money out of it.

Livestreaming of gaming is another attractive segment that has enabled many creators to generate monetisation opportunities. It has also helped the creators to retain their fans and users.

According to Radhakrishnan of Qyuki Digital Media, the developers of games like Roadblock, Minecraft, etc., make tons of money. The content creators, who are livestreaming the commentary, have garnered quite a reach via their YouTube channels.

“Livestreaming has a slightly different rhythm to it that we have not explored in a big way. The major concern is the Internet bandwidth, but the segment is taking off in India. However, most of our creator network is a little biased towards non-live content,” he added.

You can watch the full discussion below:

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