A year after TikTok ban, Indian versions struggle to make the scene

A year after the TikTok ban, brand collaborations on Indian short-video platforms like Moj, MX TakaTak, Josh and so on are yet to pick up.

Influencer marketing companies say only 10-25 per cent of the brand collaborations they facilitated were for Indian short-video platforms.

After the Chinese-owned video-sharing service TikTok was banned in June 2020, several Indian short-video platforms entered the market, backed by investor interest and nationalist sentiments. While they raised significant capital and garnered millions of downloads, the lack of global audience and quality content has limited their attractiveness for brands and influencers alike.

“While there has been good traction on Indian short-video platforms, this has not translated into quality content that is targeted towards brand promotion or collaborations. And that will continue for quite some time until the Indian short-video platforms attain global status,” said Shudeep Majumdar, co-founder and CEO of Zefmo Media.

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Over the past year, Zefmo says, it worked on about 67 campaigns, of which only four were for Indian short-video platforms.

Zefmo Media is an influencer marketing platform connecting over 60,000 influencers across 50 cities to brands. It has worked with over 50 brands.

Majumdar cites problems with content quality, unavailability of analytics and lack of quality influencers, among other things, on Indian short-video platforms.

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Monk Entertainment (Monk-E), another influencer marketer, similarly says only 10-15 per cent of the brand collaborations it facilitated was for Indian short-video platforms.

“It’s true that brands don’t engage much with influencers on Indian short-video platforms as their priorities are still Instagram and other established platforms. Indian platforms are extremely focused on Bharat and seem to have a conscious approach to not go global. This is also why top creators don’t want to create content on Indian short-video platforms unless they are paid for it,” said Monk-E’s co-founder Viraj Sheth.

Monk-E works with over 200 brands (80 per cent Indian, 20 per cent global) and manages 65 content creators or social media influencers like BeYouNick, Ranveer Allahbadia aka Beerbiceps, Niharika NM, Madan Gowri and Sanjyot Keer, among others. The company also gets contracts from Indian short-video platforms to get creators on their apps.

Priyanka Gill, co-founder, Good Glamm Group, and Founder and CEO, POPxo-Plixxo, said, “For any new social media platform, it’s very hard to attract influencers because they are used to getting paid for everything and very rarely does an influencer do anything for free. If you don’t already have an audience on your platform then influencers have no incentive to create free content on that platform.”

Good Glamm Group is a digital house of brands constituted by direct-to-consumer beauty brand MyGlamm after multiple acquisitions. Women-centric digital platform POPxo is one of the acquired companies and it owns the influencer marketing platform Plixxo.

Plixxo has been working to get short-video makers to create content for the platform. It says almost 25 per cent of the brands it worked for have been campaigns with, or for Indian short-video platforms.

Plixxo has over 200,000 influencers on the platform and, at any point of time, more than 50,000 influencers are activated. The company has worked with over 400 brands, with the Indian and global ratio at 90:10.