Pic 1 – Ajay Vidyasagar, Regional Director, APAC Partnerships at YouTube addressing the media during the Press Conference.
Pic 2 – Chu Chu TV receiving a Diamond creator Play button for reaching 10 Million subscribers.Chennai, 1st August 2017: With over 400 million Internet users in the country, improved connectivity and affordable smartphones is leading to massive growth in consumption of online video in India. Recognising this demand and to celebrate the success of the fastest growing creators from Tamil Nadu, YouTube today hosted “Tamil Day”, where the YouTube team met with the new breed of online video creators from Chennai and talked to them about the resources that YouTube provides to help them grow. The day also saw successful creators share their success secrets to help creators learn about new ways to capitalise on the growing demand for local language online video content.
As more users get online, YouTube is witnessing staggering growth in consumption of content in local native Indian languages. In the last one year, YouTube has witnessed a staggering 400% year on year growth in watch time reaching over 180 million monthly unique users on mobile alone according to App Annie, making it the #1 video streaming app in India.
Speaking at the event, Ajay Vidyasagar, Regional Director, APAC Partnerships at YouTube, said, “YouTube growth has kept pace with the growth of Internet in India revealing India’s insatiable appetite for online video. Right from our launch in India, we have invested in helping content creators succeed on YouTube and over the years, Indian content companies have gone from providing short clips on the site to a wide range of deeper engagement through web series, music videos and host of other content across genres. I am delighted to share that today, our Indian language partner content watch time is growing by 100% y-o-y and our Tamil partners are ahead of the curve, seeing massive growth in both users and watch time.”
Providing further insights, he shared that “India’s regional content producers have been very quick to adapt to the new reality of on-demand content consumption on the go and they have embraced YouTube to not only provide popular TV shows to their audience but also produce made for web content. In addition to popular TV shows, today users can enjoy hundreds of web series that are live on YouTube with south India alone offering close to 40 web series with around two dozen more in the works. As more users get online regional web series are also seeing higher engagement from the audience in India and from the Indian diaspora abroad contributing to over 40% of the watch time growth.”
YouTube also celebrated the success of Chu Chu TV at the event by handing over a Diamond creator Play button for reaching 10 Million subscribers. Since setting up their business in 2013, Chu Chu tv has grown from strength to strength globally and crossed the milestone with just over 200 videos and with over 14 million subscribers. Chu Chu TV today leads the global rankings for top channels for kids content and their success is a prime example of India’s ability to compete globally in content and storytelling.
YouTube also revealed the top creators channel from Chennai by subscribers:
Chu Chu TV
C4eTech
Madras Central
Put Chutney
Jump Cuts
Madras Meter
Smile Settai
Tamil Tech
Tech Factory
Tamil Today
How To Raju
Sreenath Recipes
Loud Oli
Gowri Samayalarai
With plans to further invest in supporting local language creators succeed online, YouTube shared that it will continue to host a number of initiatives to inspire and find newer creators. YouTube will continue to invest in programs like YouTube Next Up, inviting creators to showcase their talent and gain from mentoring by YouTube and countries top creators. In addition to that, YouTube will further invest in hosting initiatives focusing only on creators down south as the demand continues to grow.
Additional Notes for editor:
Indian Language User – Internet landscape: Google & KPMG Report:
In the last few years, the rapid scale of adoption of Internet across the country has set the ball rolling and today Indian Language users have already overtaken the total number of English language users on the Internet in India.
India today has 234 Million Indian Language users online, compared to 175 Million English users.
The Indian language user base will continue to grow at 18% annually to reach 534 million in the next four years.
9 out of 10 new Internet users coming online today will be an Indian language user.
Adoption of Internet by Languages spoken:
Today, Tamil, Hindi, Kanada, Bengali and Marathi speaking users have the highest adoption online services, followed by Telugu, Gujarati and Malayalam.
In the next four years –
Hindi speaking users alone will overtake English speaking users and will be the most used language on the Internet in India
Marathi, Bengali, Tamil and Telugu speaking internet users will form 30% of the total Indian language internet user base
About YouTube:
YouTube is the world’s most popular online video community allowing millions of people to discover watch and share original videos. YouTube provides a forum for people to connect, inform and inspire others across the globe and acts as a distribution platform for original content creators and advertisers large and small. YouTube, LLC is based in San Bruno, Calif., and is a subsidiary of Google Inc.
