Snap CEO credits AR lenses, short videos for its first profit in over 10 years — says India expansion was 'successful’

• Snap Inc. in its latest earnings report said Snapchat now has 319 million daily active users.
• The company also reported a 64 per cent increase in revenue to reach $4.1 billion.
• Snap CEO Evan Spiegel in the earnings call termed the company’s expansion in India a success.

Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat has finally become profitable after launching in 2011. The company reported a 64 per cent increase to $4.1 billion revenue for the quarter ending December 2021. Snapchat also reached 319 million daily active users (DAUs), up from 306 million in the previous quarter.

“The fourth quarter marked the end of an exciting and productive year for Snap. We grew our community, expanded our product offerings and demonstrated the power of our augmented reality platform, both inside and outside of the Snapchat application,” CEO Evan Spiegel said in the earnings statement.

In terms of user base, Snapchat’s largest revenue still comes from North America and Europe. The other markets are categorised as “Rest of World” which also includes India, a market it started expanding on in 2019. Speaking of which, Spiegel said, “Our expansion efforts in India continue to prove successful and we are using our learnings to inform how we approach community growth in new geographies.”

Snapchat for the first time reached 100 million monthly users in India last year. It also partnered with Flipkart and cosmetics companies Sugar Cosmetics and MyGlamm for AR experiences and virtual try-ons.

Growth areas

Snap is one of the early pioneers when it comes to augmented reality (AR) products. Spiegel said that over 200 million engage with AR on Snapchat everyday and its community engages with AR lenses more than 6 billion times per day. Spiegel also highlighted the Spectacles AR glasses that it launched earlier this year. “Hundreds of Creators from 30 countries have now developed AR Lenses for Spectacles, overlaying computing on the world in an immersive and interactive way,” Spiegel said. The AR glasses though are not commercially available like its previous generations which offer only camera recording capabilities.

In addition to areas like Discover for content, Spiegel said Spotlight, Snapchat’s TikTok-like short videos platform is growing rapidly. In the last quarter, Spotlight viewers subscribing to Snapchat creators increased twice as much as the previous quarter. There’s also a 3x increase in monthly posts by creators compared to when it launched a year ago.

Disclaimer : Both Snap and Business Insider operate in partnership with Times Bridge in India

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