YouTube says consumption of videos in Indian languages growing

YouTube sees a "staggering growth" in consumption of content in Indian languages, YouTube's director of content partnerships Satya Raghavan said. Raghavan also said over 1,200 Indian creators on YouTube had crossed 10 lakh subscribers each. Currently, YouTube has more than 265 million monthly active users from India while 60 per cent of content consumption is outside the metro cities, Raghavan said.

"We are witnessing a staggering growth in content consumption in Indian languages. More than 1200 creators in the country have crossed the million-subscriber threshold. Just five years ago there were only two creators with one million subscribers," said Satya Raghavan, the director of content partnerships of YouTube in India.

India has over 120 women YouTubers with more than 10 lakh subscribers

Bengali content growing

More than 95 per cent of YouTube videos being watched in India are in Indian languages and Bengali content is growing more than 100 per cent year-on-year (YoY) in watch time, he added.

"About 60 per cent of content consumption actually happens outside metros and there is huge demand from consumers for the content across categories such as dance, music, comedy, education, food, tech, entertainment and learning," Raghavan said.

He also claims online video content in Indian languages is becoming a primary driver for internet usage as less than 20 per cent of the Indian population is conversant in English. Raghavan said the language ecosystem on YouTube has been deepening as the contents in languages like Hindi, Tamil, Telegu, and Malayalam are getting richer while videos in Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati and Marathi are gaining momentum.

YouTubers creating content in vernacular languages on the rise

Over 35 Bengali channels have now crossed the one million subscriber mark, over 65 channels in the language have subscribers between 5 lakh to one million and about 500 Bengali channels have more than one lakh subscribers, Raghavan said.

YouTube is also witnessing a growing number of content creators and viewers in vernacular languages, including Hindi, Tamil and Bengali in smaller cities and towns. YouTube's Head of Family and Learning Partnerships Don Anderson earlier said Indian users use YouTube to learn a range of things - right from "how to tie a tie" to learning farming techniques, among others.

(With PTI inputs)