Facebook had the largest market share among social media platforms across India, at roughly ** 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 ** 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 *** billion U.S. dollars. The company has further set its sights on bringing the metaverse to life to enhance the online experience of over ***** billion Facebook users across the world.

Social media users were the highest across India as of February 2021 for messaging app Whatsapp, at *** 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.

** 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 ****** 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.

According to a survey conducted by Rakuten Insight in February 2025 reported that ** percent of Indian respondents preferred Instagram for social commerce. In comparison, ** percent of respondents chose YouTube for purchasing on social media.

A survey conducted in January 2022 revealed that 18 to 25-year-olds constituted the largest share of social media users in India, with ** percent using six to nine social media platforms at a time. Contrariwise, nearly *********** of the respondents aged 56 and above claimed to 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.

When asked about the different social networks used to access news as of 2025, a majority of the surveyed respondents in India stated *******, and ******** as their main sources at ** and ** percent, respectively. X (formerly Twitter) had the lowest popularity for news access among Indians in that year.

*********************** and *********************************************** 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 25,891 respondents in India, in 2025.

YouTube had an advertising reach of around *** million users across India as of January 2025. This was the largest audience reached via ads recorded in the country that year. Instagram and Facebook followed with approximately *** and *** million users respectively during the same period.

A survey revealed, ** percent of the Indian respondents living in small cities used more than 10 social media platforms in India, as of January 2022. On the other hand, nearly ** percent of respondents from villages stated that they do not use social media platforms. The source noticed that people residing in urban areas were using more social media platforms compared to Indians living in rural areas.

A survey conducted in January 2022 revealed WhatsApp as the most used platform among social media and messaging apps in India, with ** percent of respondents using it many times a day. This was followed by YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. The source revealed, despite the popularity of social media and messaging apps among Indians, three-fifth of the population never used these platforms,mainly due to lack of access to technology or smartphones.

According to a survey conducted by Rakuten Insight in February 2025 found that ** percent of respondents in the age group of 25 to 34 years old in India preferred Instagram for social commerce. By contrast, ** percent of respondents in the 55 years and above age group reported purchasing products from Facebook.

A survey conducted by Rakuten Insight in February 2025 reported that the majority of Indian respondents, ** percent, had purchased regularly through social media platforms. In comparison, about ** percent of respondents had never purchased anything through social media.

Growing digitalization efforts combined with low data prices enabled a significant number of people to use the internet actively across India. Of these, about *** million were active social media users. WhatsApp and Instagram accounted for the largest penetration, at over ** percent and over nearly ** percent respectively in the third quarter of 2024. 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 *** 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.

This statistic represents the results of a survey about the usage of social media platforms by Indians in rural areas in 2018. Most respondents, about ***, used Facebook, while about *** respondents exclusively used WhatsApp during the survey period.

According to a survey on influencer marketing in 2024, Instagram was the **** preferred platform for influencer marketing in India. YouTube followed by a wide margin. Both these platforms offered wider reach and higher engagement rates. Comparatively, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Snapchat were **** preferred.

A survey conducted by Rakuten Insight in February 2025 stated that about ** percent of female respondents in India preferred Instagram for shopping on social media. In comparison, ** percent of male respondents chose Instagram for social commerce.

According to a survey on influencer marketing in 2023, Instagram was the leading platform for influencers to garner followers, with 45 percent of respondents following an influencer on it. YouTube and Snapchat were the second and third most popular platforms. Young users residing in India's metro cities followed influencers on Instagram while users aged between 25 and 34 followed them on YouTube.

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

According to a study on influencer marketing across India in 2024, YouTube was more popular among influencers than brands. In contrast, LinkedIn was more widely used by brands, as indicated by nearly ** percent of brands, signalling the platform's advent into the influencer marketing sphere. However, of the two platforms, YouTube remained the popular choice for influencer marketing.

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.