Online video consumption in India, helped by the pandemic: Report

Bolstered by prolonged stay-at-home periods, especially during the pandemic, the consumption of videos online has exploded in India, according to a new study by Bain and Company. As per the report — ‘

Bolstered by prolonged stay-at-home periods, especially during the pandemic, the consumption of videos online has exploded in India, according to a new study by Bain and Company. As per the report — ‘India Online Videos–The Long and Short of It’, the online video user base in the country has scaled to more than 350 million people, growing 24% between 2018 and 2020, nearly twice as fast as markets such as China and Indonesia.

However, despite this growth, there exists massive headroom in penetration and usage. About 59% of India’s Internet users consume videos online, as against 67% in Japan, 69% in Indonesia, 74% in Brazil, 76% in Mexico, 78% in S. Korea, 79% in the UK, 83% in the US and 92% in China.

The report forecasts that by 2025, three in four Internet users, or 600-650 million Indians, will consume short-form videos (SFVs), with active users spending up to 55 to 60 minutes per day. Meanwhile, long-form videos (LFVs), which is already almost double of SFVs with about 350-400 million users watching it, is estimated to see a similar number of users by 2025.