Some of India's most popular live-streamers, including singers, dancers, hosts and lip-syncing artists, emerged winners at the 2018 edition of Bigo LIVE Annual Awards. As many as 37 winners were announced in nine categories from among thousands of participants. Chinese brands Honor and Layuva were the sponsors of the Awards, while corporates like Baidu and Draphant also attended the ceremony.
The Bigo Live Awards recognized and felicitated live-streaming hosts and talent management agencies which performed exceptionally well on the BIGO LIVE platform last year. Hridaan and Shelly emerged winners in the category of most popular male and female singers, respectively, while Pinki with 1.39 million followers was declared the best dancer on the BIgo Live platform.
The award for best male new host was won by Hassan Ali while Ashka emerged the best female new host. Hazel won the Bigo Walk of Fame (Nice Voice), while Keshav and Nivi got the award for the best male and female talk show, respectively. Other winners included Pari Gumber (Bigo Walk of Fame: Popularity), Kiaah (Bigo Walk of Fame: Beauties) and Aliza (Bigo Walk of Fame: Cash Cow).
Akanksha Parhad won the award for the best lip sync, while Sameer and RG Rajput were declared the best male and female hosts, respectively. Sandhya won the Bigo Popular Choice 2018 Award. Tahazud Khan bagged the award for Top Agency. All these performers have lakhs of followers on the Bigo Live platform.
The winners were selected from among millions of Bigo Live users through online contests and polls both on social media and in-app. The categories included BIGO LIVE hosts and talent agencies; BIGO Walk of Game; BIGO Walk of fame; top performing agency; debutante agency; social media sensation, etc. The winners got certificates, trophies, merchandise and cash prizes.
Talking about the awards, Nagesh Banga, Marketing Head, Bigo LIVE India, said: "We are extremely delighted and proud to acknowledge the BIGO LIVE community and honour the top performing hosts and talent management agencies which did exceptionally well on our platform in 2018. Since its launch in 2017, Bigo LIVE has got over 60 million strong user base in India with over 10,000 hosts. In less than two years, Bigo has emerged as not only the top live-streaming app in India, but also the highest revenue generating app."
The BIGO LIVE Awards, which were instituted last year, have already become very popular among the Indian live-streaming community. Nagesh Banga added: "Bigo LIVE enables users to interact and socialise with each other, showcase their talent globally and earn money. We are extremely proud of the thousands of success stories that have emerged in India from people using the BIGO LIVE platform. Many of our hosts have made it big and become an Internet sensation, with huge follower base, full-time career opportunity and huge monthly earnings.