Lockdown Has Led To An Increase In Demand For Online Services In India

Pandemic panic and paranoid aside, “quarantine and chill” is now the trend among Indians as they suddenly have too much time to spend on whatever they like.

From following social media trends to dusting off old hobbies, people are trying their best to keep themselves occupied while in lockdown. However, in a world where the Internet is a new reality, online recreation is what flourishes.

Online Gaming

As stated in a report by Google-KPMG, by 2021, India’s online gaming segment will be worth $1.1 billion. The country is among the world’s top five biggest markets for mobile gaming with around 300 million gamers in 2019. With people confined in their homes, India has seen a surge in user engagement.

During quarantine, Psych and Houseparty prove their broad appeal and become the most played titles. The number of users rushing to these apps has increased so much that people experience lags with Psych.

E-Books

Besides gaming, e-books have also seen a jump in the number of users. A prime example is a sudden love for Karnataka Government's digital library app. Ever since the state’s libraries went digital on February 26, over 16,500 people have downloaded their apps.

The main reason for this growth is the government’s order to close colleges and schools to curb the spread of COVID-19. As students cannot step out of their houses and risk being infected, they now rely on online resources for their studies.

To meet with an increasing demand for online materials, Juggernaut publishing house started a campaign called #ReadInstead with a view to encourage the reading habit. What they did was to create a free e-book section for users to download and read on their devices.

Online Casino

Online gambling has long been a substantial part of the whole industry and as India is under lockdown, people who cannot step outside are gravitating towards this means of recreation.

As online casino in India becomes the new favorite, several websites for online gambling report an increase in both the number of visitors and time spent.

Glaws, one of the casinos operate in India, reported a surge of 25% in traffic visiting the website and 20% in transactions. The same is true for Poker Gangal, which enjoys a 15% and 100% growth in the number of users and time spent respectively.

Games2Win, India’s biggest online operator, also gains big when the country of 1.3 billion people is under lockdown. Before the outbreak, the platform hosts around 1.2 billion players, but now it records around 1.5 billion.

Social Media

As the main way for people to feel connected - the feeling most people long for when their usual way of socializing has been forbidden as a result of COVID-19 lockdown, social media has seen a surge of 87% in the time people spent consuming content. That translates to an average of four hours per day on social media.

Before the lockdown order was made public, people used to spend around 150 minutes but a week into the mandatory isolation, this number increased to 280 minutes, according to a survey.

75% of people participating in the survey reported spending more time on WhatsApp, Twitter, and Facebook. They mainly consume news and connect with friends and family while it is currently impossible to have offline meetings.

TikTok, launched in 2012, is now the runner-up behind Facebook in terms of time spent. The short-video sharing app reports an increase from 39.5 minutes to 56.9 minutes in average session time.

However, the biggest gainers are live video-streaming apps. Live.me saw an increase of 315% in time spent on the app while that of Bigo is 66%.

The open rate or the number of times users open one particular app in a day, also surged by 59% and 53% for Instagram and TikTok respectively.

Movies

According to a report by the BARC (short for Broadcast Audience Research Council) and Nielsen, a US-based data analytics company, Indians’ average time spent on online streaming platforms has increased by 12% during the mandatory lockdown.

The platforms this report analyzes are Amazon Prime, Hotstar, Netflix, Zee5, MX Player Online, and Voot. It reveals that users spend 32% more time on original series; however, it does not elaborate on any particular title. Some of the most popular series in India are Special Ops on Hotstar, SHE and Sacred Games on Netflix.

Movies have seen an even sharper jump at 52%, which is projected to be the direct result of cinemas being closed during the lockdown.

Non-original series, on the contrary, experiences a decline of 17% in time spent. The situation is gloomier for sports, which suffers from a dip of 83% as sporting events are canceled to curb the spread of COVID-19.

In terms of the number of users, these platforms have seen movie viewership skyrockets by 56%. The number for the original series is even more impressive, standing at 123%. For non-original series and sports, the figures have decreased by 21% and 98% respectively.

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