Applications
WeChat aims to reinvent social communication on mobile in India
MUMBAI: WeChat, a global mobile social communication application, has unveiled its latest brand campaign to boost its marketing effort with Bollywood actors Parineeti Chopra and Varun Dhawan as the brand ambassadors of WeChat in India.
The brand campaign captures the “true spirit” of WeChat of being young, effervescent and instant. The campaign also showcases WeChat’s distinctive features like voice messaging, group chat, moments and special emoticons.
With a bundle of features like ‘Hold-To-Talk’, WeChat is all set to re-define the way people communicate with each other. WeChat’s ‘Hold-To-Talk’ is the first application in communication space which enables users to send voice messages at the touch of a button.
‘Moments’ is another key differentiating feature of WeChat where users can post image or text and share with their selected friends in a secure way.
According to the company, WeChat has already become a rage amongst Indian youth and is the top app downloaded daily on the AppStore. WeChat’s daily users have grown five fold in the last one month.
WeChat has also introduced “Official Accounts” on its platform, a feature that can be utilised by companies and merchants to build interactivity with their fans in a new and innovative way. Brands like Café Coffee Day, Big Bazaar, Yahoo! Cricket, Goibibo, Santa Banta, and Tradus are amongst the earliest brands to start their official accounts on WeChat in India, the company said.
The global top free mobile social communication application WeChat, was launched in India in July last year across iPhone, Android, Symbian, and Windows Phone platforms and was recently launched on the BlackBerry platform as well.
Applications
Inshorts Group chief Deepit Purkayastha joins IAB video council for Southeast Asia and India
The co-founder and chief executive of the short-form content platform has been inducted into the IAB SEA+India Video Council, giving India a stronger voice in shaping digital video frameworks
NOIDA: India has long been the world’s most chaotic, multilingual and mobile-first digital market. Now, one of its most prominent short-video executives is getting a seat at the table where the rules are written.
Deepit Purkayastha, co-founder and chief executive of Inshorts Group, has been selected as a member of the IAB SEA+India Video Council for 2026. Run by the Interactive Advertising Bureau, the council brings together senior leaders from Southeast Asia and India to shape standards, best practices and measurement frameworks for the fast-evolving video and digital advertising ecosystem.
The timing is pointed. According to the IAMAI-Kantar Internet in India Report 2025, over 588 million Indians are now consuming short-video content, with growth increasingly driven by rural and non-metro audiences. India’s active internet user base has crossed 950 million, with 57 per cent of users now coming from rural markets. Yet the frameworks that govern how video consumption is measured and monetised were largely designed for single-language, Western markets and have struggled to keep pace with the scale, diversity and complexity of India’s digital landscape.
Purkayastha is no stranger to these debates. He already serves on the AI Council at Marketing and Media Alliance India and as co-chair of the Digital Entertainment Committee at the Internet and Mobile Association of India. His induction into the IAB SEA+India Video Council extends that influence into the global video standards arena.
Inshorts Group sits squarely at the intersection of these forces. Its flagship product, Inshorts, India’s highest-rated short news app, reaches 12 million active users with 60-word news summaries. Its sister platform, Public App, reaches 80 million monthly active users across more than 700 districts and 12 languages, serving communities that most global platforms barely register.
Purkayastha said the opportunity was about building something more representative. “India today sits at the centre of the global video ecosystem, but the frameworks that define how value is created and measured have not always kept pace with the realities of our market,” he said. “Being part of the IAB SEA+India Video Council is an opportunity to contribute to a more representative and future-ready approach, one that accounts for diversity in language, context, and user intent.”
As a council member, Purkayastha will contribute to shaping regional standards across video advertising, measurement and platform governance, with a focus on frameworks that are native to India’s multilingual, mobile-first ecosystem rather than imported from global benchmarks designed elsewhere.
For years, India has been content to play by rules written for other markets. Purkayastha’s induction is a signal that it is done waiting to be consulted and ready to start writing them.
