Regional content is driving the growth of women users in India

As internet penetration grows deeper across the country, regional content is gaining a massive scale. User-generated content platform for women Momspresso.com revealed insights into the explosive growth of regional content in the country. The platform revealed that currently, 65% of the content created is in regional languages, and accounts for 85% of page views.

According to the Google KPMG report, Indian language internet users are expected to grow at a CAGR of 18% to reach 536 million by 2021, while English users are expected to grow at only 3% reaching 199 million within the same period. The growth potential of industry players leveraging regional content, therefore, is massive. As far as content consumption is concerned, the numbers tell an interesting story.

Speaking on the findings, Vishal Gupta, Co-founder and CEO, Momspresso.com, said, “At Momspresso.com, we were amongst the earliest to leverage this trend by launching Hindi as far back as January 2017. Since then we have launched 8 more Indian languages and have witnessed the massive impact of regional languages on our user growth. Over 85% of the 85 million monthly page views that we receive are on account of the 9 regional languages that we have. Considering that Indian language users are expected to make up 75% of India’s internet user base by 2021, the future potential of vernacular is undeniably huge.”

Regional language content creators’ growth pattern

Momspresso.com’s study revealed that 43% of content creators on its platform are creating content in Hindi – and garnering 60% of overall page views. There has been a phenomenal growth of regional language content creators. More specifically, the data suggests that in the last 12 months content creators in Marathi grew by 7X, Hindi by 3X, Bangla by 3.3X and Tamil by 5X.

Within the same period, the contribution of regional language-based content has grown from 38% to 62%. While these bloggers are creating content across several topics, ‘Mom’s Life’ which deals with day-to-day issues that mums face such as relationships, parenting, career choices are the most popular.

In a noteworthy development, the contribution of regional V-loggers to the overall content has grown from 0-50% in the last year, reinforcing the potential of video content.

Increasing smartphone and internet penetration is enabling more women across geographies to create regional language content. This can be corroborated with Momspresso.com’s data which revealed that the contribution of vernacular content created through its mobile app grew from 70% in 2018 to 94% in 2019.

Momspresso.com revealed that regional language page views on its platforms grew by 180%. This growth was led by Hindi which contributed to 65% of page views, followed by Marathi (10%), Bangla (8%), Tamil (7%) and Malayalam (6%).

The top cities consuming regional language content include cities such as Jaipur, Lucknow, Patna, and Agra, implying that consumption of content is happening beyond the metros in tier-2 & tier- 3 cities. The top states in terms of regional language content include Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Delhi among others.

As part of its detailed study, the platform also found that 60% of its regional content is consumed by millennial audiences between the age group of 22-35.

Monetisation via regional language

More than 60% of purchases are made or influenced by women, making this a highly valuable audience.

This is illustrated by the fact that the most expensive channels other than sports are general entertainment channels in regional languages that cater to this audience. The growth in regional language content has brought about scale in the number of women interest users, resulting in brands transitioning from traditional media to online media.

The contribution of regional languages to overall monetisation at Momspresso has grown from 13% to 30% in the last one year. The popular solutions being used by brands include content creation in regional languages (both text and video), influencer marketing and geography-specific digital activation.

There are expected to be 300mn women internet users by the year 2021, with the vast majority of them being regional language users. As a result, this growth in regional language consumption and monetisation will continue to grow strongly in the foreseeable future.