iWorld
Will Indian short-video apps’ monetisation experiments pay off?
KOLKATA: The popularity of short snackable videos exploded in India with the advent of TikTok. While it was on the way to be the indisputable leader with top influencers, premium brands, and a growing number of users, geopolitical tension curtailed the dream journey. When several homegrown apps emerged to plug the market gap left by TikTok, many experts had been sceptical about their sustainability.
However, these apps did not tank – in fact, the ‘Made in India’ apps collectively have managed to capture TikTok’s market share. These platforms have secured 97 per cent of the Chinese app’s users, a recent report from consulting firm ReedSeer suggested. However, the time spent reaching 55 per cent of what it was in June shows there are more opportunities to boost engagement. While many of these apps are raising funds, using the capital to scale up the operations, build robust technology, adding new features, they have started looking at monetisation potentials as well.
Unleashing brand partnership opportunities
One of the apps that have emerged as a leading player in the ecosystem is MX TakaTak, the short video arm of MX Player. “For short video platforms, there are a variety of monetisation opportunities available. One is obviously the ad-based model, where we sell inventory to different brands. We are not focusing on that too much at the moment,” MX TakaTak business head Janhavi Parikh said.
For now, the platform’s primary focus is to work with brands to run branded hashtag challenges to drive engagement. “Although it’s in pretty early stages for us, a lot of brands are interested in doing this. But we are taking things slow. Branded challenges, influencer marketing are big opportunities to grow monetisation,” Parikh added.
Chingari has also tried out hashtag challenges for brands that are very popular on the platform, co-founder & CEO Sumit Ghosh said. Brands can float a hashtag and then offer money to influencers, creators to create content for the brand. It’s a win-win for the brands and creators as brands pay the latter and the platform amplifies the brand. However, the app is overall not very bullish about direct advertisements as those disrupt the user experience, he noted.
Another homegrown app Bolo Indya has partnered with brands to do content marketing using live streaming with creators where there could be a product positioning during the live stream or purely working with a brand for brand recall being the primary objective, Bolo Indya CEO and founder Varun Saxena shared.
Expanding the role of social commerce
Rather than depending only on advertisers, the apps are also coming up with innovative initiatives. Take for example Chingari – the app that’s dominating the vernacular markets is experimenting with several routes. “We will get into monetisation at a later stage but right now we are just testing certain methods,” Chingari’s Ghosh said.
“We have recently produced video commerce technology where every video that gets uploaded to Chingari, you will see a shop button on the video, powered by AI & ML. Basically, what we are doing is finding out shoppable objects within the video and comparing with the live catalogue of Amazon and showing what products you can buy from Amazon,” he explained.
The chosen model will impact revenue as well. For Bolo Indya, it will not be a backend set-up but will be launched under a partnership model with an e-commerce player. MX TakaTak has also been toying with the idea. Lifestyle content focused short video platform Trell also entered this segment at the beginning of this year, partnering with over 500 brands across makeup, personal care, health and wellness categories.
Building consumer-creator direct engagement
“I think everybody is trying to innovate revenue model, somebody is trying e-commerce model, somebody is going the advertisement way. Everybody has to find which model suits their product and how to benefit. The good part for us is we have seen a good trend in terms of users spending on the platform, not just time but some money since last quarter,” Mitron TV CEO and co-founder Shivank Agarwal previously said in an interview.
The app, which recently celebrated its first anniversary, has opened up different monetisation opportunities. One such feature is Mitron Club, Through the Club, creators can churn out engaging content exclusively for users opting for the service. The Club members can also directly connect with creators to request to create content that they would like to watch. Consumers subscribe for Rs 99 per month to become a part of the entire ecosystem of the creator.
In addition to that, it has unveiled an on-demand service wherein consumers can ask specific help of creators and they can create videos around the queries asked by the audience.
Direct engagement between consumers and creators to drive monetisation is a key focus for Bolo Indya. On this app, content creators can create online services and post on the platform which are delivered on a real-time interactive basis to audiences through one-to-one, one-to-many live interactions, Bolo Indya’s Saxena said. This could be an astrologer conducting an astrology session with someone or a comic creator doing stand-up comedy show for a group of audiences on a pre-ticker basis. The app takes a platform fee and the rest of the share goes to creators.
“Our application primarily revolves around the core of enabling the content creators to monetise their content. When we native them to monetise their content on the platform, we see a revenue share out of it,” Saxena stated.
Another major mode of monetisation for the app is through live streaming. Any creator can go and live stream and people who are watching those live streams can send gifts to those creators. These gifts can be purchased by the audience paying real money on the platform, Saxena said. Whatever the value of the gifts end up being the earning of the content creators and the platform takes a revenue share out of it. Hence, the app highly relies on consumer microtransactions which start from as low as Rs 10 and goes up to Rs 5000.
Tapping into booming ed-tech opportunities
Interestingly, some of these platforms are looking at ed-tech as an opportunity to bring in money. Mitron Academy is one such initiative where the creators get an opportunity to share educational videos to help users learn from the platform. It has onboarded a number of experts on different topics.
Chingari is also working on an edtech offering called ‘Chingari Skill’ which will be launched soon. Thanks to this product, any Chingari user will be able to sell their skills. According to Ghosh, it will leave a lot of scopes for users to create such content in vernacular language as most ed-tech content is either in English or in Hindi. Notably, a large part of Chingari’s user base comes from tier-3 and tier-4 cities.
Future opportunities
“We have few other revenue streams in the pipeline which include launching creator rooms where the creator can post social games live learning sessions around fitness, wellness, health etc on the platform for a closed room of the audience creating their own customisation by the platform,” Saxena said.
While MX TakaTak is already doing live streaming, Parikh seems optimistic that there are a multitude of monetisation opportunities in live streaming over time. The bigger ones could be e-commerce as well as virtual gifting, all of which will be explored in near future.
How far is profitability?
As the platforms are trying to build sustainable revenue models, the question of when these models will turn profitable also arises. However, Chingari is not focusing on profitability at the moment and is devoting its energies to distribution, to reach the maximum numbers of users. Ghosh added that it may take two years down the line to become profitable.
However, Bolo Indya’s Saxena claimed the platform is very close to breaking even at the current scale as well when it comes to the monetisation side. He expects the app to be profitable in the next 12-15 months.
“If we look towards China, after the first few years, Kuaishou, as well as Douyin, have done phenomenally well because the growth has been so huge. With all of the different monetisation opportunities kicked in, it probably took three-four or even five-six years. If we follow that China model, revenue opportunity is huge and profitability follows definitely,” Parikh commented without revealing any timeline.
eNews
India uses ChatGPT for technical tasks nearly 4 times the world average: OpenAI
From classrooms to code, India’s AI use is increasingly skill-driven and youth-led.
MUMBAI: If code is the new currency, India is already minting it by the million prompts. In the world’s largest democracy, artificial intelligence is no longer a distant abstraction or a boardroom buzzword. It is a daily companion, drafting emails in Hyderabad, debugging code in Bengaluru, polishing essays in Delhi, and fielding life advice in towns far beyond the metros. Fresh data from OpenAI’s “Signals” initiative offers a rare, granular glimpse into how India is using ChatGPT, and the numbers suggest the country is not just adopting AI; it is actively shaping its use.
India is one of the largest markets globally for ChatGPT’s weekly active users and ranks among the top five countries for API usage. With OpenAI’s global consumer base exceeding 800 million users, most of them on free tiers, the dataset captures adoption patterns that go far beyond enterprise subscriptions.
Indian users, notably, are punching above their weight when it comes to advanced capabilities. Among ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers, usage of the data analysis tool is roughly four times above the global median. Use of Codex, OpenAI’s coding platform, is about three times above the median. Indians are nearly three times more likely than the global median to ask coding-related questions and almost twice as likely to seek help on education and learning.
This matters because it signals something economists call a shrinking “capability overhang”, which is the gap between what AI tools can do and how fully users exploit them. In India, that gap appears to be narrowing rapidly.
The geography of this coding intensity tracks the country’s technology hubs. Telangana, which is home to Hyderabad, ranks first in usage of OpenAI’s coding capabilities. Karnataka, home to Bengaluru, follows in second place, while Tamil Nadu comes third. In other words, the prompt traffic mirrors the tech corridors.
Nearly two-thirds of consumer ChatGPT messages in India are now non-work related, while slightly over one-third are tied to work. That marks a significant shift. In earlier phases of adoption, work was the dominant use case. It was only in early 2025 that non-work messages overtook professional use, and the divergence widened throughout the year.
Even so, India remains slightly above the global average in work-related usage. Around 35 per cent of consumer messages in India relate to work, compared with roughly 30 per cent globally.
At work, the emphasis is squarely task-oriented. Around 45 per cent of work-related conversations fall into “doing” behaviours such as drafting documents, transforming text, and completing tasks, compared with a much smaller share in non-work contexts. Technical help and writing dominate. In offices across the country, ChatGPT functions as a digital co-pilot that debugs code, polishes presentations, and unblocks stalled workflows.
Outside work, the tone shifts. Over 35 per cent of non-work messages revolve around practical guidance, which includes everyday advice and how-to queries. Roughly 20 per cent relate to seeking information. Nearly one-fifth involve writing tasks such as drafting or editing. Self-expression and learning loom large. In personal life, Indians appear to use AI less as an executor and more as an explainer, sounding board, and study partner.
India’s demographic dividend is clearly reflected in its AI habits.
Users aged 18 to 24 now account for just under half of all ChatGPT messages sent in the country. They surpassed the 25 to 34 age group in mid-2024 and have held the lead ever since. Globally, the 18 to 24 cohort accounts for about one-third of messages; in India, the share is markedly higher.
Combined, users aged 18 to 34 generate roughly 80 per cent of total consumer ChatGPT messages in India. Given that around 40 per cent of India’s population is under 25, the youth skew is unsurprising, but its implications are profound. Education-related queries, early-career problem-solving, and skills development are likely to dominate near-term AI impacts.
Usage patterns also differ by age. The 18 to 24 cohort accounts for a near majority of messages seeking practical guidance, technical help, and self-expression. Meanwhile, the 24 to 34 group sends a slightly higher share of multimedia and technical help queries relative to its overall share of usage.
If AI norms are being written in real time, it is young Indians who are holding the pen.
OpenAI does not collect gender data, but inferred patterns based on typically masculine and feminine first names reveal a measurable gap in India. A little under 60 per cent of users have typically masculine names, and just over 40 per cent have typically feminine names. This skew is more pronounced than the global average.
Worldwide, users with typically feminine names now account for slightly more than half of all messages. This shift occurred only in the summer of 2025, when feminine-name usage overtook masculine-name usage globally. In India, the gap persists, although it has been narrowing over the past year.
There are also topical differences. Users with typically feminine names are more likely to send messages related to self-expression, practical guidance, and writing. Those with typically masculine names lean more towards seeking information and technical help.
The data does not capture motivations, but it does highlight where inclusion efforts and digital literacy initiatives could focus if AI is to broaden opportunity rather than deepen divides.
The consumer story aligns with India’s broader AI momentum. The country ranks second globally in AI skills penetration and has one of the fastest-growing AI talent pools. It accounts for 9.2 per cent of global AI publications in computer science as of 2023, which represents a substantial contribution to research output.
At the same time, investment in AI data centres and digital public infrastructure is expanding, promising to knit together datasets and resources at scale. Enterprise adoption is also robust, which suggests that consumer experimentation is unfolding alongside institutional integration.
OpenAI’s “Signals” project is built with aggregated, privacy-preserving data and released with a time lag. It aims to provide a durable measurement layer for the AI era. The idea is not to track individuals, but to surface patterns such as where adoption is accelerating, who is using the tools, and what they are actually doing.
In a country as vast and varied as India, such evidence is more than academic. It shapes decisions about workforce training, small business support, education policy, and safeguards.
For now, the numbers paint a picture of a nation that is not merely consuming AI, but conversing with it in an energetic, experimental, and increasingly skilful manner. In India, the future of work and learning is not being downloaded. It is being drafted, debugged, and rewritten in real time.
