Telegram grew its active user base by 110% in India last year

While Telegram might be gaining a lot of users this year due to WhatsApp’s controversial privacy policy update, the app was already impressive growth in 2020 in India.

According to analytics firm App Annie, Telegram’s monthly active users increased by 110%  — in a 600 million internet user market —and made it the fastest growing social app in the country. WhatsApp was second in the growth list, followed by Instagram and short video apps MX Takatak and Moj. Both these apps launched last year following TikTok’s ban in the country.

This means Telegram starts the year with an impressive foothold in India — with more than 115 million active users — and it might only increase as more people might turn their back on WhatsApp.

Despite this, WhatsApp still rules the messaging game in India with more than 400 million monthly active users, and it’ll be a tough task to get anywhere near that figure.

App Annie’s state of mobile 2021 report suggests that like the rest of the world, Indians spent a lot of time on their phone due to the pandemic — 4.6 hours per day on average as compared to 3.3 hours per day in 2019.

In terms of downloads, Facebook’s family of apps still top the chart. However, the short video app Snack snuck into third place, before it was banned in November. Also, despite being booted out of the Play Store and App Store in July, TikTok managed to grab the fifth position in downloads.