Microsoft's foray in Indian social media is long due, say experts

Microsoft’s overture to buy out Chinese short-videos platform TikTok and its initial interest in Indian social media app ShareChat are indications that the software company’s foray into the advertisement revenue-aided consumer internet space has been long due, experts said.Under CEO Satya Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft has refocused business to the Cloud and led an aggressive acquisition strategy using cash to buy both big as well as small firms.It bought professional networking site LinkedIn in 2016 for $26.2 billion and acquired a platform for software developers, GitHub, in 2018 for $7.5 billion. Microsoft’s move is being seen as a natural progression to its aggressive strategy under Nadella to become a larger player in the advertising industry and access the growing advertising inventory. It is already present in email with Outlook, office collaboration with Teams, and search engine space with Bing. “Microsoft has been in the space for a long time and things are better at the company under Nadella’s leadership. They are natural buyers into social media even though it may not look like that,” said Anand Lunia, founding partner at India Quotient. “It is a large company and exploring new options. They have no proven expertise in social media, so they are buying.”On Friday, business daily Mint reported that Microsoft was in discussions with ShareChat for an investment.Sources confirmed to ET that ShareChat executives had met with Microsoft to discuss investments but emphasized that the talks were preliminary as of now. ShareChat did not reply to ET query.“India gives eyeballs and valuation to global internet companies even though revenue generated from India might be a fraction of that. Nadella is riding high and is seen as the new value creator at Microsoft, so he will manage to get stakeholders to take this leap of faith,” said Deepak Gupta, managing partner at WEH Ventures.India has 504 million active internet users, according to the recent Digital in India report by industry lobby group Internet and Mobile Association of India. “Microsoft has so far not been aggressive in advertising-generated revenue businesses. It has focussed on subscription-based services. With the TikTok deal, they will be able to break into the Indian market. It does not want to miss the opportunity to become a full-stack business, and lose out to Facebook and Google in India,” said Amit Kumar, partner at Ah! Ventures.Microsoft has escaped the antitrust and content moderation scrutiny that has engulfed Facebook, Google, Netflix, and Amazon in the United States. The acquisition of Tiktok may, however, change that. “Now, with the acquisition of TikTok, MS is entering into mainstream social media space, opening up a new Pandora’s box of issues around content moderation, misinformation, user privacy -- even becoming arbiters of free speech, similar to other Big Tech actors,” said Urvashi Aneja, founder-director of Tandem Research.