Have more ground to cover in India, says Twitter CFO

India is an under-penetrated market for Twitter relative to the opportunity, company CFO Ned Segal said in an interaction with analysts after a tech-conference. Segal said Brazil too had enormous potential for growth for Twitter.

Segal was responding to a question by an analyst.

Twitter does not disclose its India user base separately, but it is estimated to have close to 30 million active users now, according to Statista, a statistics portal.


When contacted by ToI on the statement, Twitter said, “India is one of Twitter’s largest and fastest growing audience markets globally. As we look ahead to 2019, we are focused on making Twitter a healthier and valuable everyday service for people across India. We’re continuing to introduce improvements that make it easier for people to follow events, topics and interests on Twitter. We’ll also continue to invest and drive growth of our advertising business through video and other creative solutions to help brands and partners derive greater impact and connect with an influential, receptive global audience on the platform.”

Segal’s comment comes within days of Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey drawing flak for holding a poster that read ‘Smash Brahminical Patriarchy’ on a visit to India. The visit itself marked the growing importance of the market for the US-based company as it looks at emerging markets to grow its monthly and daily active user base. Globally, it recently witnessed a drop in its monthly active users. At the end of the third quarter, Twitter had 326 million monthly users globally, down from 335 million users in the preceding quarter.

“But when you look at even the more developed markets like the US and Japan, we see a whole other segment that looks just like the group of people that use Twitter in those markets and we feel like they ought to be using Twitter more regularly too. The work is for us to make it easier to find things that they are looking for on the platform,” Segal added.

Google and Facebook have a bigger presence in India compared to Twitter. India is one of the largest markets for Facebook-owned WhatsApp. Twitter’s India head Taranjeet Singh had recently quit.