Instagram’s quiet success in India

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Editor's note: It’s almost like Instagram in India works in the shadows. The visual-heavy middle child of Facebook is often absent from the Indian social media conversation. And that is when its DNA is more social than anybody else. In a politically charged climate where most of its peers—from Facebook and Twitter to local platforms ShareChat and Dailyhunt—are either mired in controversies or politics or proving their nationalism, Instagram is quite possibly the last happy place. The platform was always about lifestyle and popular culture, and its virtual world of feeds, photos and videos has largely stood by that promise. And yet, we don’t hear much about the company in India—not its numbers, its team, its policies or even its controversies. While Instagram globally has announced a massive change in strategy, a shift in focus from photos to video—it’s unclear where Instagram India stands after all these years. Even as every social media app in India has been trying to establish its dominance in the post-TikTok world, Instagram has largely stayed away from the noise. Perhaps because the platform doesn’t sit at …