Mumbai: Google’s video platform YouTube has announced that its user-base in India has now grown to 265 million, as of January, up from 225 million last year.
It also added that as much as 85 per cent of its users now access the platform on their mobile phones in the country, up from 73 per cent last year. The platform entered the country just 11 years ago.
“With 265 million active users, India is now our biggest audience and one of our fastest growing markets in the world. Today we are the first-stop content consumption, be it for entertainment or information,” said global chief executive, YouTube, Susan Wojcicki.
“It’s this variety of content, combined with the growing reach that makes us a perfect platform for brands to drive personalised engagement,” she said while speaking at the annual YouTube event Brandcast India.
Susan said in the past one year alone, while consumption on mobile has increased, 60 per cent of watch-time came in from outside of the six large metros.
“Today over there are 1,200 Indian creators who have over one million subscribers. Just five years ago, only two creators had one million subscribers,” Wojcicki added.
“Right here in India, more and more people are using videos for entertainment and learning. And by 2020, it’s expected that 500 million Internet users here will consume video online, clearly underlining the momentum and the vast potential,” she said.
YouTube, which had in 2018 launched its first original music-based show “Arrived”, said it will be launching more of original content that would be ad-supported in the country. YouTube, which brought in YouTube Music to the country last month, has seen three million users in the first week.
YouTube’s global music head Lyor Cohen said, “We are incredibly excited to partner with Indian artists and labels to grow faster and go further.”