Snap Inc has opened its first Snapchat office in India with an aim to bring more localised content to the platform. Eyeing the promising Indian market, Snapchat opened an office in Mumbai earlier this week. The California-based communication app maker is planning to boost new content creators, local publishers and media organisations to bring stories, shows, lenses and more to its platform, reported Gadgets 360.
The choice of the city is also very clever seeing as Mumbai is the financial and entertainment capital of the country and is home to several media and entertainment companies.
Chief Strategy Officer Jared Grusd himself came to India for the launch of the Snap Mumbai office.
Snapchat, which is a rival of Facebook-owned Instagram, has been looking to make waves in the Indian market for the last few months. In late July, the company had organised a Creator Summit in Mumbai bringing together more than 80 content creators that included Malini Agarwal of the MissMalini fame, TV comedian Gaurav Gera, Nagma Mirajkar among others. The move was aimed at wooing Indian users.
Snapchat has steadily laid down the groundwork in the Indian market space. In April, the company had introduced support for four Indian languages – Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi and Gujarati- on its app. And as per the report by Gadgets 360, Snapchat is planning to bring five more Indian languages to the platform by the end of 2019. This will no doubt offer more localised content for the Indian users.
It is interesting to note that in April 2017 Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel found himself in the eye of the storm when a report by Variety Magazine quoted him as saying that the app was only for rich people and not for poor countries like India or Spain. Spiegel was reported to have said, “I don’t want to expand into poor countries like India and Spain.”
So, what brought the change?
The move is backed by a Google report which was published in 2018 that had emphasised the importance of Indian languages for apps such as Snapchat and forecasted that the Indian language Internet users will rise by a staggering 536 million by the year 2021.
Snap has also made partnerships with platforms such as Gaana and JioSaavn, allowing its users to share their favourite music from the apps.
Most notably, Snapchat in April grabbed headlines when it partnered with the Election Commission of India with its campaign in order to create awareness among the Indian voters with its tools and polling information.
