InMobi wants more mobile users to Glance at lockscreens with Live

The feature, called LIVE, currently has 20-25 daily live shows currently, which are between 5-20 minutes long

Piyush Shah, co-founder, InMobi Group, and president and chief operating officer, Glance, has set an ambitious target for Glance. As the company launches Glance Live, he wants the artificial intelligence-based software company to be the leader in the ‘live internet’ space. Glance Live will look at unlocking its presence on the lockscreen of smartphones.

Shah believes the ‘live’ format as a form of content is the Next Big Thing. Just as Google owns the 'search' and Facebook the 'social media', Shah wants Glance Live to own 'live' as a category worldwide. Glance comes pre-installed and enabled on Android phones.  

Live or short-video formats are not new. Nearly all major social media players, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, have some offering in Live. The short-video space in India is set to be the second-biggest segment, in terms of time spent in a year, after internet behemoths like Facebook and Google, according to new research by consulting firm RedSeer. 

The monthly active users of the short-video space are expected to grow more than twice to reach over 650 million users by 2025, clocking the second spot after television. This growth is largely expected to be driven by the new 300 million internet users that will be added by 2025, said the consulting firm.

It is natural for Glance to also enter the segment. What is unique though in the case of Glance Live is that it will be available on the lockscreen, and a user will not need to tap into another application to access video.

Glance Live, the company said, reduces the cognitive overload by adopting a discovery-led approach for live content, and at its very core is likely to provide a deep immersive experience, engagement, and transaction. 

For Glance, which raised $145 million from Google and Peter Thiel's Mithril Capital in 2020, this is about taking its bet of using lockscreens as a real estate for internet consumption a step forward.

“Three years back, we saw something on the lockscreen of phones that no one else could. As a user, everyone looks at their lockscreen at least 100-200 times a day, either for a notification or a weather update,” said Shah.

For perspective, Glance achieved the milestone of having an active user base of 150 million in India in the second quarter (Q2) of 2021, according to Counterpoint Research’s quarterly mobile application tracker. With 151 million active users, Glance grew 8 per cent quarter-on-quarter in Q2. This means one in every four Indian smartphone users is now active on the Glance platform, which offers an interactive lockscreen experience to Android smartphone users.

Shah believes the next big frontier of content consumption is going to be live internet. “We have seen the evolution from text and visual images to long-form video and short-form videos like TikTok. The world is now moving towards live internet, such as live news, sports, and entertainment. We want to make live e-commerce a part of this offering,” he added.

With Glance Live, Glance is also bringing together an ecosystem of content creators and developers from across genres of sports, entertainment, news, gaming, and shopping.

“It's not about simply wanting to partner five marquee production houses and take it to users. We also want content to be democratised, yet curated responsibly. We do not want it to be just another user-generated content, but premium as well,” added Shah.

One such instance was when Glance Live partnered Chennai Super Kings for the Indian Premier League that gave users a chance to interact real-time with cricketers directly on the lockscreen. Ravindra Jadeja, Suresh Raina, Shardul Thakur, Moeen Ali, Dwayne Bravo, and Robin Uthappa were some who went Live.

The beta release has seen the company do 20-25 live shows currently at a duration of five to 20 minutes. “Our viewership is around 500,000-1 million. Based on feedback, we can say confidently that Live is our primary vector. By being on the lockscreen, the discovery issue is solved,” said Rohan Choudhary, general manager and vice-president, Glance Feed.

The other reason for Live to be one of Glance’s biggest bets is the company channelling every offering it has on to Live. This means even e-commerce, as well as its short-form video platform Roposo.

Shah said that the company will soon make an announcement of its e-commerce foray. “Our e-commerce bet is different from traditional e-commerce players, based on consumer intent. Consumers, especially the youth, are excited by commerce driven by content, discovery, and inspiration. All these are fuelled by creator-driven experiences. Product endorsement has altered. There is more attachment, affinity, and inclination,” added Shah.

After the launch in India, the next market to tap will be Southeast Asia, where it has a user base of 25-30 million. Eventually taking it to Latin America and the US in 2022 will be the next logical step.