How India's data boom is influencing content strategies abroad

Reliance Jio's ubiquitous (covering 99% of the population by year end), ridiculously cheap and fast data plans (USD 3 for 60GB of 4G data a month), super cheap handsets and the subsequent lowering of rates by incumbents has led to a few interesting consequences

Millions of new users are getting added every month without the worry of data consumption caps. And what do you do when you are in a small Indian town, have so much data, limited alternative entertainment and lots of time on hand? Video streaming and most popular among them YouTube. So much so that India has leapfrogged to become #1 country by data consumption in the world (> US + China combined).

This massive bunch of YouTube viewers has not escaped the eyes of non-Indian content creators (Americans, Europeans, Koreans among others). Creators are quickly learning that they can ratchet up millions of views faster than they can imagine by creating content for Indian audience. So suddenly in the last 2 years you have proliferation of review channels (reviewing everything from movie trailers, Indian snacks to the latest item number), food vloggers, music creators and many others to either significantly ramp up their India-focused content or pivot exclusively to Indian content. Some of them have even become mini-celebrities and are interviewed by local media.

Will be interesting to see the Indian Internet user to drive more changing patterns on content, entertainment, global apps in the next few years