Snapchat parent company Snap Inc has opened its first office in India, and announced that the multimedia messaging app has logged a 40 percent increase in Daily Active Users (DAUs) on year-over-year (YoY) basis in the June quarter in the country. The new office will be located in Mumbai and the company’s local team will focus on expanding strategic partnerships, building an engaged community of creators and users, and servicing local advertisers.
“We are thrilled to open Snap’s first office in India. We have seen strong momentum in our business over the past twelve months, and believe that building a team locally will allow us to create the best possible experience for local Snapchatters. We continue to expand our strategic partnerships with regional media companies, add more community content, and work with local content creators,” Jared Grusd, Chief Strategy Officer, Snap Inc, said in a statement.
The company says that it has received a good response from advertisers and brand partners in India. Claire Valoti, Snap’s Vice President, International Advertising Solutions, says, “We have created a number of AR activations for consumer brands such as Pepsi, OnePlus and Cadbury this year. We are excited to continue to support advertisers through our local partner, Tyroo, and are also establishing a local Advertising Solutions team to work directly with our larger advertisers.”
Snap has already announced that Durgesh Kaushik will be the Head of Market Development, and he will be a part of the global team led by Nana Murugesan, Snap’s Managing Director of International Markets. The company also introduced four Indian languages to Snapchat, with plans to launch an additional five languages before the end of the year.
The news comes at a time when Snapchat is facing tough competition from other apps like Instagram, which has almost the same filters and Stories feature, as well as TikTok, the latest sensation in the country. According to Snap Inc, about 203 million people use Snapchat daily on average. Instagram had 69 million daily users in July 2019. Facebook says that 2.1 billion people now use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Messenger every day on average, and more than 2.7 billion people use at least one of our Family of services each month.
When it comes to TikTok, the app had 200 million registered users and 120 million active users in India as of June 12. As of July 23, the app had 300 millions downloads. Moreover, the company has already announced that it will establish a data centre in India. “We are now in the process of examining options for safe, secure and reliable services for our Indian users within India's borders,” the company said in a statement. Since its India launch, the data of the Indian users is being saved at the third-party data centres in the US and Singapore.