The anti-China sentiment has led to a massive clean-up of Chinese apps from mobile handsets, being replaced by Indian versions. Roposo, an Indian video-sharing social media platform has made the most of this movement clocking 700,000 daily installs and becoming the number one trending app on Google and Apple play stores. The platform aims to be present on every phone in India. Mayank Bhangadia, CEO & Co-Founder, Roposo talks about this surge in numbers, synergies with Glance and further integration of the platform.
Q] How is the anti-China sentiment helping Roposo?
The app was always ready. We’ve been building the product since the last few years and have been improving the product by taking feedback from people across India. Now because of these external triggers, the numbers are shooting up.
Q] How much surge in traffic have you noticed in the last one week and in the last four months due to pandemic-induced lockdown?
In the last three-four months, new users joining the platform have gone up by 20 times. Existing users started using the app 50% more due to the COVID-19 lockdown. Content creation on the platform went up by 500% and the average time spent now is more than 35 minutes. In the last couple of weeks, and last few days specifically, we have seen 700,000 daily installs with new users joining the platform. We are the number one trending app on both Android and Apple play store these days. In the past four months, the revenues have increased by roughly 50%, and have doubled again the past couple of weeks.
Q]Do rural and regional areas also form a large user base for your app?
Over 50% of our user base comes from tier I cities and the remaining from tier II and III cities. The moment a user joins the platform, we start understanding him through our machines and a good recommendation system. We collect those inputs based on his behaviour and his subsequent experience keeps changing in real time. That is how we are able to accommodate different types of users together.
Q] There are already many established apps and video sharing platforms. What is the USP of Roposo?
In the internet space, things change very fast. If you go by what has happened in the last one week, it is difficult to predict who would be leading in the month of July. We are not a single feed product. Our approach is extremely holistic. There are over 30 communities on the platform which are also very different in different languages. We are able to accommodate many more creators compared to other apps in our domain. The other big difference is that we are ethical and transparent with our creators. So we share with them whatever we earn, regardless of who the creator is.
Q] InMobi acquired Roposo in 2019. What are the synergies within the company, especially with Glance?
Glance sits on a massive scale. There is no other Indian platform which has about 100 million daily active users today. So, we get help on scale from there. Interesting content also goes from Roposo to Glance and gives us the right visibility. And the group company InMobi is extremely strong in monetisation.
Q] Social media commentary is generally negative in nature. For example the trending topics and hashtags are rarely positive. How do brands connect with their audience in such an environment?
Brands should ideally create their own space, rather than going to one of the social media platforms. And Roposo is innovating in that direction. We are packaging our technology and content and are soon going to power video feeds for a lot of digital platforms. You will see us present on two big platforms very soon. One of them is an e-commerce player and other, a health and fitness community. This will be like a social media platform on their own apps. So they will be able to control the whole experience themselves and keep it targeted and clean. You will see much more integration happening over the next six months.
