Facebook had the largest market share among social media platforms across India at roughly 64 percent as of October 2024. The Meta-owned social network site has consistently led the country's social media market since 2019. Instagram was the second leading social media platform during that period with a market share of over 25 percent, reflecting a fluctuating trend that emerged in the previous year. Commercial social media usage in India Apart from creating user-generated content, Indians have leveraged social media to grow their businesses. As consumption via online channels increased, social media began playing an important role in stimulating the Indian economy. Among the most popularly used social media platforms in India, Facebook was increasingly used for digital marketing. On the other hand, Instagram emerged as the country’s leading platform for influencer collaboration. Meta Platforms Since its launch in 2004, Facebook has quickly gone on to become the social media giant it is today. Having acquired leading social media platforms Instagram and WhatsApp, the company rebranded itself as Meta Platforms Inc. in 2021. The following year Meta generated a revenue of nearly 116 billion U.S. dollars. The company has further set its sights on bringing the metaverse to life to enhance the online experience of over three billion Facebook users across the world.

Growing digitalization efforts combined with low data prices enabled a significant number of people to use the internet actively across India. Of these, about 462 million were active social media users. WhatsApp and Instagram accounted for the largest penetration, at 83 percent and over 80 percent respectively in the third quarter of 2023. The rise of Facebook in India   Hyderabad became the first Asian Facebook office registered under “Facebook India Online Services Private Limited” in 2010. The steady growth of the social network did not come without controversies. One of the most opposed collaborations that Facebook founded was internet.org, especially in India. The partnership with Reliance communications in 2015 caused controversy and was banned later that year. In recent years, the rise of fake news and its impact on politics has brought responsibility and content moderation to the forefront.   YouTube – the video-sharing social platform counterpart   YouTube was largely inspired by two events according to one of its founders – one of which was the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. The idea was the make sharing and finding videos easily available. YouTube consumption in India sky-rocketed with the Indian Premier League match streaming in 2010 with over two billion views per day. Of course, this doubled with each season of the IPL thereafter. Furthermore, music videos were highly popular in the country. The evidence lies in the subscription growth of the music record label T-Series’ YouTube channel.

The number of Instagram users in India was forecast to continuously increase between 2024 and 2028 by in total 46.1 million users (+13.89 percent). After the ninth consecutive increasing year, the Instagram user base is estimated to reach 377.99 million users and therefore a new peak in 2028. Notably, the number of Instagram users of was continuously increasing over the past years.User figures, shown here with regards to the platform instagram, have been estimated by taking into account company filings or press material, secondary research, app downloads and traffic data. They refer to the average monthly active users over the period and count multiple accounts by persons only once.The shown data are an excerpt of Statista's Key Market Indicators (KMI). The KMI are a collection of primary and secondary indicators on the macro-economic, demographic and technological environment in up to 150 countries and regions worldwide. All indicators are sourced from international and national statistical offices, trade associations and the trade press and they are processed to generate comparable data sets (see supplementary notes under details for more information).Find more key insights for the number of Instagram users in countries like Pakistan and Nepal.

The social media user penetration in India was forecast to continuously increase between 2023 and 2028 by 22.4 percentage points. According to this forecast in 2028, the penetration rate will have increased for the fifth consecutive year to 83.16 percent. Notably, the social media user penetration was continuously increasing over the past years.

With the ease of internet access, the number of social media users in India stood at 518 million in 2020. Furthermore, the social network users in the country were expected to be almost 1.5 billion in 2040. Facebook remained the popular choice among the social media platforms as of 2020.

What was the attraction and who was attracted to it?

The Indian Premier League, an annual cricket tournament conducted across major cities in the country might hold the answer. The IPL, one in many cricketing events followed religiously in India, had the highest attendance among all cricket leagues worldwide. Apart from the attendance, fans seemed to be keen on updates about their favorite teams. The IPL teams registered over 59 million likes on Facebook alone and more than 81 million followers on Twitter. Most of the Facebook usage came from the younger generation, aged between 18-24 years to be precise, with over 97 million users in 2018.

How was this achieved?

Increased availability of internet connections and access in recent years, propelled by the central government's Digital India initiative was directly proportional in the growth of social media users. Internet penetration had been on the rise with over 34 percent of the Indians being able to access the internet in 2017, which made the South Asian country the second largest market globally after China.

"Sent private messages" and "Liked posts by other users or followed people" are the top two answers among Indian consumers in our survey on the subject of "Most common social media activities".The survey was conducted online among 24,173 respondents in India, in 2024.

Social media users were the highest across India as of February 2021 for messaging app Whatsapp, at 530 million. YouTube followed during the same time, with Facebook ranking third. The government in the country introduced new rules under its IT-law earlier that year with the aim of social media platforms self-regulating by focusing on stronger guidelines.

77 percent of Indian respondents answer our survey on "Most used social media platforms by type" with "Instant messengers (e.g., WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat)". The survey was conducted in 2023, among 24,201 consumers.Find this and more survey data on most used social media platforms by type in our Consumer Insights tool. Filter by countless demographics, drill down to your own, hand-tailored target audience, and compare results across countries worldwide.

A survey conducted by Rakuten Insight in February 2023 reported that the majority of Indian respondents 38 percent had purchased through social media platforms. In comparison, about 20 percent of respondents had never purchased anything through social media.

When asked about the different social networks used to access news as of 2023, a majority of the surveyed respondents in India stated YouTube, and WhatsApp as their main sources at 54 and 48 percent, respectively. X (formerly Twitter) had the lowest popularity for news access among Indians in that year.

According to a survey conducted on digital payments in India as of August 2020, majority of Generation Z spent their time on social media for content. About 63 percent of teenagers spent time on social media apps to chat with other people.

According to a survey conducted by Rakuten Insight in February 2023 found that 75 percent of respondents in the age group of 25 to 34 years old in India preferred Instagram for social commerce. By contrast, 76 percent of respondents in the 55 years and above age group reported purchasing products from Facebook.

According to a survey conducted by Rakuten Insight in February 2023 reported that 70 percent of Indian respondents preferred Instagram for social commerce. In comparison, 57 percent of respondents chose Facebook and YouTube for purchasing on social media, respectively.

A Rakuten Insight survey on consumer attitudes to social media advertising in India conducted in 2023 revealed that a majority of Indian consumers have purchased products after seeing an ad on social media, albeit at varying frequencies. Around 36 percent of the respondents admitted to sometimes buying an item after seeing a social media ad while another 31 percent did so often. Social media was one of the leading digital advertising formats employed in India.

YouTube was the most used social media app in India as of November 2024, with each user spending an average of 29 hours and 37 minutes per month on the online video platform. Facebook and Instagram were the second and third most used apps.

YouTube had an advertising reach of around 462 million users across India as of January 2024. This was the largest audience reached via ads recorded in the country that year. Facebook and Instagram followed with approximately 367 and 363 million users respectively during the same time period.

The share of microblogging site X, formerly known as Twitter, in India's social media market bumped up to nearly three percent in December 2024. Since the social media platform was acquired by Elon Musk, the company has been embroiled in legal battles with the Indian government and faced stiff competition from Meta-owned platform, Threads.

A survey conducted in January 2022 revealed that 18 to 25 year olds constituted the largest share of social media users in India, with 31 percent using six to nine social media platforms at a time. Contrariwise, nearly four-fifths of the respondents aged 56 and above claimed not having used social media platforms. The source noticed that people residing in urban areas were using more social media platforms than those in rural areas.

A survey conducted by Rakuten Insight in February 2023 found that 68 percent of female respondents in India purchased clothing items on social media. Furthermore, about 47 percent of male respondents reported having purchased bags and shoes on social media platforms.

According to a survey conducted by Ipsos in June 2019, around 57 percent of Indian respondents agreed that social media platforms were the best and most accurate source of news and information. Of these, about 21 percent strongly agreed with the statement. The survey was conducted in light of coordinated attacks on more than 300 Sri Lankans in April earlier that year. This had led to the shutting down of social media by the national government in an attempt to stop the spread of misinformation.