How short video apps are fuelling big ambitions for content creators from small towns

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

social media platform ShareChat and started to recite shayaris, sing and do a bit of comedy to entertain the handful of viewers he had.

Three days later, PM Narendra Modi declared a nation-wide lockdown to combat Covid-19. At that time, no one anticipated that the lockdown would extend for as long as it did, but it gave creators like Raj a captive audience — locked up at home and hungry for content.

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“Initially, my parents would say things like, ‘Din bhar bak bak karte rehte ho [All you do the whole day is talk],” said Raj, who has nearly 8,500 followers on ShareChat. “They were upset that I wasn’t keen to work at our family apparel store. But as time passed, I proved to them that I was earning money by all that talking,” he further said, adding that in a good month, “I can earn as much as Rs 1 lakh and thanks to my work on ShareChat, I bought a BMW bike.”
Driving force

According to a November 2023 Redseer report, the effectiveness of Indian short form video (SFV) apps can be attributed to two key factors — they reach users in Bharat, and are increasingly being considered integral channels within large-scale branding and reach campaigns.

“The surge in usergenerated content (UGC), driven by the SFV landscape, paved the way for the rising influencer ecosystem,” the report said. “India’s UGC ecosystem comprises approximately 3.5 million influencers, segmented into four archetypes basis the number of followers: micro, macro, mega and elite.”

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