Political parties tap into apps for campaign blitz

HYDERABAD: It’s not just big global investors who are showing interest in homegrown apps, political parties are tapping into apps to reach out to voters ahead of polls, especially to target rural audience.
While WhatsApp and Twitter continue to be most popular platforms for campaigning ahead of the 2019 elections what is touted as ‘WhatsApp elections’, political parties are logging into apps like Bengaluru-based ShareChat to push their social media outreach beyond popular platforms to further their campaigns.Currently, ShareChat is being used by YSRCP, TRS and Jana Sena. ShareChat confirmed that even the BJP, Congress and Aam Admi Party have joined their platform to unleash political blitzkrieg.
“Politicians can connect to regional voters as these apps are available in local languages. The young rural India is hooked on to these apps. They are quite active on these mediums, spending a large amount of time. Everyone is using internet and bandwidth is not an issue. Videos are far credible and convincing than text messages and naturally political parties see these platforms to catch ‘em young. A lot of campaigns are going on Instagrams and various other social media platforms,” says M Satyanarayana Reddy, incubation manager, Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), IIIT, Hyderabad. Additionally, the users can post content from audios, videos, texts and even share jokes, he said.
ShareChat, for instance, offers content in 14 regional languages from Bengali to Bhojpuri. ShareChat confirmed that it has a clutch of investors including Russian billionaire Yuri Milner’s DST Global affiliate Jesmond Holdings, SAIF Partners, Xiaomi among others.
“Our audience is first time internet users. Some of them could be casting their votes for the first time. Political parties realize that the audience we have on ShareChat (between 18-35) is exactly their target audience. We are not just there in Tier I, but we reach Tier II, Tier III and Tier IV. We reach to audiences in Guntur and Vijaywada in AP to remote places in Maharashtra like Washim district,” says a communication manager of ShareChat.
Around 13.5 crore youngsters will vote for the first time, around seven crore being men with an almost equal number of women voters. Election Commission data shows around 73% of this population lives in rural areas where internet penetration has gone up substantially, largely due to low data tariffs and internet connectivity. Additionally, smartphones have become relatively cheaper. Estimates peg the number of smartphone users in rural India at 250 million. It is this segment that political parties see as target audience.
Hyderabad-based Samosa Labs, which claims to have 5-6 lakh daily active users and boasts investments from Sequoia Capital and Xiaomi, has scores of spoof videos, audios and gifs of TDP supremo Chandrababu Naidu, his son Lokesh, Telangana CM KCR, Jaganmohan Reddy and many other politicians. The user-generated audios and gifs could be shared across other social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp.