Regional language content creation platforms targeted at women, like Momspresso.com, are turning out to be a goldmine for smart marketers. With over 330 million women in India expected to be on the Internet by 2021, engagement with customers in the vernacular is going to be the done-thing going forward.
Co-founder Vishal Gupta analyses Momspresso.com’s user data and the impact user-generated content is having on the audience.
As Internet penetration grows deeper across the country, regional content is gaining massive scale. Momspresso.com, which is a user-generated content platform for women that enables them to express themselves through text, audio, and video content in ten languages, has thrown up interesting data that highlights the explosive growth of regional content in the country.
For instance, we have found that 65% of the content created on our platform is in regional languages, and accounts for 85% of page views.
According to a 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 a compelling story.
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 eight 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 nine 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
Our study reveals that 43% of content creators on our 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 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, is 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 our data, which reveals that the contribution of vernacular content created on Momspresso.com through the mobile app grew from 70% in 2018 to 94% in 2019.
Languages That Indian Women are Consuming the Most
We find that regional language page views on the platforms have grown 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 Jaipur, Lucknow, Patna and Agra, implying that consumption of content is happening beyond the metros in tier-2 and tier- 3 cities. The top states in terms of regional language content include Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Delhi, among others. We have also found that 60% of our regional content is consumed by millennial audiences in 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-based are general entertainment channels in regional languages.
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.com 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.
Momspresso.com’s recent campaign Kahan Gaya Mummy Ka Sunday is an excellent example of how regional content is getting monetised. An insightful Hindi blog about the Sunday Paradox (mothers not having any holidays, not even Sundays) has gained such massive traction on the back of its relatability that we have turned it into a digital film for Voltas Beko.
We then engaged with over 300 mega, micro and nano influencers to build conversations around the campaign. The film struck a chord with moms and went viral with more than a million views and ten thousand shares. The massive success of this campaign is evidence of the potential of regional language content for brands.
There are expected to be 300 million women Internet users by 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.
