Most of India’s vernacular language internet users (78%) use social media during their leisure time, unlike those in urban centres, who spend most of the time on various content streaming platforms, according to a new report from ShareChat published with Nielsen India.

Nielsen India carried out the primary research for the report to better understand the overall social media usage, consumption and online behaviour of internet users divided into English (India) and native language (Bharat) social media users.

Satyajit Deb Roy, director, sales, ShareChat said: “Interestingly, the findings have indicated a paradigm shift in the online consumption behaviour among ‘Bharat’ audiences and highlighted how Bharat internet users have evolved into a mature internet audience, though they prefer to interact in their native language. Moreover, the report has also suggested that the Bharat users have a higher spending propensity, are comfortable shopping online, and are equally well-versed with investment.”

Findings from the ‘Understanding India’s Next Billion Internet Users’ report include:

  • 78% of Bharat engages in social media activity like watch/upload/create content during their leisure time.
  • 73% of internet users sign into social networking platforms every day and they are most active between 7 pm and 11 pm.
  • Bharat users spend over 5 hours a week, signing in at least three times every day.
  • Videos remain their most preferred format, and users spend up to 2 minutes on every video.
  • 49% of users post content daily, images being the highest uploaded format closely followed by videos.
  • Music, comedy and news are the most followed content genres on social media.
  • Messaging, banking and payment, delivery, and online shopping are the top four Digital Apps, used by every second social media user – Bharat users at par with India users.
  • Videos are the most preferred format, with preference being for videos that are up to 2 minutes in duration.
  • Bharat users invest more, spend more on travelling and expensive lifestyle goods.

Internet consumption is driven by mobile data. As data plans become cheaper across networks, nine out of 10 users use mobile networks to access internet most of the time, the report said. Reliance Jio was the most preferred mobile network for Bharat.

In terms of mobile devices, “What’s more, most of the regional geographies of the country are brand conscious, with Xiaomi and Samsung turning out to be the brands of choice for the majority,” the report said.

The report also highlighted that Delhi, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh have noted a high usage of digital apps. Low usage of digital apps was seen in Haryana, Kerala, Odisha and Gujarat.

The study was conducted with 3,788 respondents across 81 cities in India, with 40% of respondents coming from Tier 2 and Their 3 cities.

Sourced from Times of India, Inc42, The Hindu Business Line, ETBrandEquity, afaqs!