Times Internet-backed short video app MX TakaTak said Wednesday it has launched a fund of INR 100 crore (USD 13.6 million) to reward content creators on its platform who regularly come up with interesting and unique short videos as competition in the sector intensifies.
The five-month-old company said it’s looking for original content across categories including education, technology, sports, art, entertainment, fashion and makeup, travel, and photography.
“The MX TakaTak Creator Fund is a way to give back to millions of people who bring their ideas into videos as well as to inspire other digital enthusiasts. We were thrilled to see the amount of creativity and hard work that our users put into bringing their dreams alive and into a video,” said Karan Bedi, CEO, MX Player, which owns MX TakaTak.
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Launched in July — a month after ByteDance’s famous short video app TikTok was banned in India — MX TakaTak claims to have 10 million content creators and 70 million monthly active users. The company competes with over a dozen such short video companies that mushroomed after the sudden departure of TikTok from India. A few names in this space include ShareChat’s Moj, InMobi’s Roposo, Chingari, Mitron, among others.
Similar to MX TakaTak’s creator’s fund, its competitors Chingari and Roposo had announced talent shows and competitions earlier this year, which was aimed at increasing their pool of content creators.
The recent announcement from MX TakaTak comes at a time when Google made two bets in this space earlier this month. The tech giant led an investment round of USD 145 million in Glance, which owns Roposo, along with another funding round of USD 100 million in Bengaluru-based DailyHunt which operates short video platform Josh.
“The short format video ecosystem is fast evolving and we’re delighted to have emerged as the market leaders in this category,” Bedi said.
The company said it would give reward money to creators based on their performance criteria, such as uniqueness of content, authenticity, views, engagement, and followers.
While it’s not clear the average monthly income of creators on Indian short video apps, according to a report by the Indian Institute of Human Brands, content creators on TikTok who had at least a million followers were able to earn INR 30,000 to 35,000 (USD 410 to 477) a month. Compared to TikTok, influencers on YouTube and Instagram earn three times more through brand deals.