Exclusive: Android push powers Snapchat’s India drive

Mumbai: Snap Inc., parent of ephemeral messaging app Snapchat, sees India as a priority market, having just breached the 100 million monthly user base in the country, cofounder and CEO Evan Spiegel told ET in an interview.

While India has been an important geography for other social media giants such as Facebook —it’s home to the platform’s largest user base–Snap had kept itself largely confined to the US, a predominantly iPhone market. Spiegel, who turned down Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s overtures to acquire Snap in 2013, told ET that rebuilding the Android version of the app for India made a big difference in scaling its presence, along with localising the product and putting together a team on the ground. India is now Snap’s second-largest market, in terms of user base, after the US.