Google-owned video sharing and discovery platform YouTube is banking on vernacular content to expand its business in India. The company expects to witness vernacular content in Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Bengali to grow by 40%, by the next year.
During an interview with economic times, Marc Lefkowitz, head of YouTube Content Creator and Artist Development for APAC (Asia-Pacific) region, said, around 245 million Indian users access YouTube every month, with 60% of the growth being recorded in the non-metro cities.
The growth in India has been astronomical. We have seen a 4-times growth in content coming from overall areas. A lot of growth is outside of Hindi and English,” he said.
According to YouTube, in 2014, there were merely 16 content creators hitting the 1 million mark, that number has now reached 300, over the years, showing the explosive growth in India. With 3 creators, hitting the 1 million mark, every week. Moreover, every day more than 2,500 creators hit the 1,000 subscribers mark.
A large part of the growth is attributed to the new generation of online users in India, accessing the internet through their smartphone, as the internet plans get cheaper and the disposable incomes rise across the middle class.
As YouTube looks to expand its presence in India and offer more vernacular content, it has unveiled its second pop-up space in India. This will be the first one in Delhi NCR, enabling creators to utilise these venues to produce content. The content creators will be given free access to production equipment and themed production sets, to produce original content for their own YouTube channels.
This initiative is build around the “Learn”, “Connect”, and “Create” model, across the world. It was first introduced in India when the company launched its first pop-up space in Hyderabad last year.
With the growth of the vernacular content in India, YouTube is looking to leverage the growing opportunity to offer quality content to its users in India, as it expands its presence.