There’s an unbelievable amount of creativity on Snapchat in India: Snap Inc CEO Evan Spiegel

Social networking platform Snapchat on Monday at the company’s AR Day event said that over 250 million people engage with AR (augmented reality) daily on an average and that Indian AR developers are building strong businesses on the platform. “There’s an unbelievable amount of creativity on Snapchat from India. We have allowed creators lead the way. We saw folks building amazing things we never could have imagined. We're going to launch a host of tools for our developer community,” Evan Spiegel, co-founder and CEO, Snap Inc. said. 

He was joined by Ajit Mohan, APAC president at Snap Inc., who said Snapchatters around the world are able to engage with immersive AR experiences which bring everyday moments to life. “Snapchat is deeply committed to empowering these creators, offering monetisation avenues and providing innovative tools to support their creative aspirations,” he said. “Snapchat has the potential to become the AR hub of the world.” 

Spiegel said computers and internet are unbelievably powerful but they’ve always taken us away from the real world. “As we started working on AR, we started recognising how this would make an impact in the real world. Future of communicating is going to me more embedded in real life. India has an exciting market of young people. Giving people AR experiences is a huge opportunity to reach 200 million plus people on Snapchat in India,” he said, adding that AR reduces barriers to creativity. “How can we use AI to reduce that barrier to creation? That’s what we’ve been investing on,” he adds. 

He said that he’s excited for the role that AI will play in image and video. “It will help reduce the distance between your imagination and what you see on screen. AI is going to do a lot for self expression and innovative. For us creativity always started with solving a problem for our community. With new features like AR, we’ve been responsive to their needs,” he said. 

In India, 95 per cent of Gen Z individuals express a keen interest in using AR for shopping, with 73 per cent believing that AR experiences provide a more personal touch, Snapchat said. The Snap AR creator community in India grew by 60 per cent in 2022. In August this year, Snap launched the Lens Creator Rewards programme, a new way for AR creators, Lens developers, and teams to get rewarded for building top-performing Lenses on Snapchat. More product innovation and launches are on the way, Snapchat said. 

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