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.

Important Highlights:

• 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.
• Videos with length between 15 seconds and 2 minutes are considered SFVs, while more than 2 minutes long are categorised as LFVs.
• In India, the SFV market has taken off over the past two years, growing 3.5 times in user base and 12 times in total time spent by all users on SFV platforms.
• However, India’s short-video user base has historically been largely men from tier 2 and smaller towns, but this is evolving quickly, with the medium gaining traction in metros and amongst women.
• Smartphone users spend about 4.8 hours on their devices daily, of which a staggering one hour on average is spent consuming videos. Despite this rapid boom, there exists massive headroom for growth — online video user penetration in India is nearly 60% of Internet users, compared with more than 90% in China.
• As per the report, India has more than 50 million users who have created and posted at least one short video