India has been a great success story for Snapchat: Evan Spiegel
The platform has added 13 million daily active users in the quarter, the Snap Inc CEO and Co-founder said
Snap Inc CEO and Co-founder Evan Spiegel continues to remain bullish about the Indian market. He asserted that India has been a great success story for Snapchat, the multimedia instant messaging app, developed by Snap Inc.
It is pertinent to note that Snapchat hit the milestone of 100 million users in India in October last year.
"Certainly, India has been a great success story for us. But that's been a big focus of ours, and we've now really organized our teams in our processes around scaling that growth around the world," Spiegel told analysts during the Q1 2022 earnings conference call.
He further stated that there was a huge opportunity for Snap to grow its presence around the world. He also feels that visual communication is more appealing to users.
"So on the user growth side, certainly a ton of opportunity around the world, especially in the Rest of World region and in Europe. And what we're really excited about is the value that Snapchat has in connecting close friends and family through visual communication just continues to be really strong. People love sharing what they're up to visually. It's much more expressive. It's obviously much faster than text messaging," he noted.
Snapchat, he said, has done a lot of work to localise its application to improve its performance. "We're really unlocking that core product value for our community around the world. So lots of great progress there."
Speaking about the Q1 financials, Spiegel said that the first quarter of 2022 proved more challenging than the company had expected. Snapchat's community grew 18% year over year to 332 million daily active users and revenue grew 38% year over year to $1.06 billion.
Marking the third quarter of positive free cash flow, Snap reported adjusted EBITDA of $64 million and free cash flow of $106 million. "Our team was able to make significant progress against our goals, despite the increased volatility in the operating environment," Spiegel said.
He also stated that Snap has remained focused on expanding its product offering and deepening engagement with the global community, which grew by 13 million daily active users in the quarter.
"The future of our business depends on the engagement of our community, and we are pleased to see elevated growth rates in the Rest of World region, where we added 10 million daily active users in the quarter," he added.
In an effort to educate its community on the power of AR, Snap had announced a new augmented reality Creator program in India powered by Lens Studio. The program, he noted, will include an online developer course and a series of challenges that aim to empower developers and local creators across the country.
Talking about the market opportunity for Snapchat, Snap Inc Chief Business Officer Jeremi Gorman said Snap comprises less than 2% of the $210 billion digital ad market and less than 1% of the $520 billion global digital ad market. Further, the platform reaches nearly half of US smartphone users and more than 75% of 13- to 34-year-olds in over 20 countries.
"In addition, mobile advertising is growing faster than desktop advertising. Video advertising is growing faster than non-video advertising and self-serve advertising is expected to make up 90% of all digital display ad spend in 2022. These trends are favourable for our strategy, and we believe our video advertising business has the potential to deliver robust top-line growth," he stated.
