Social network penetration India Q3 2023

Growing digitalization efforts combined with low data prices enabled a significant number of people to use the internet actively across India. Of these, about 462 million were active social media users. WhatsApp and Instagram accounted for the largest penetration, at 83 percent and over 80 percent respectively in the third quarter of 2023. 

The rise of Facebook in India

  Hyderabad became the first Asian Facebook office registered under “Facebook India Online Services Private Limited” in 2010. The steady growth of the social network did not come without controversies. One of the most opposed collaborations that Facebook founded was internet.org, especially in India. The partnership with Reliance communications in 2015 caused controversy and was banned later that year. In recent years, the rise of fake news and its impact on politics has brought responsibility and content moderation to the forefront.  

YouTube – the video-sharing social platform counterpart

  YouTube was largely inspired by two events according to one of its founders – one of which was the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The idea was the make sharing and finding videos easily available. YouTube consumption in India sky-rocketed with the Indian Premier League match streaming in 2010 with over two billion views per day. Of course, this doubled with each season of the IPL thereafter. Furthermore, music videos were highly popular in the country. The evidence lies in the subscription growth of the music record label T-Series’ YouTube channel.