Twitter Inc Plans To Up Investment In India

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Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) is planning to invest in the fast emerging Indian market, according to Katie Jacobs Stanton, vice president of global media at the micro-blogging company. She sees India as a big market for Twitter. In India, mid-priced gadgets are gaining ground. This, along with increasing Internet access, is driving growth in social media tools, especially Twitter.

India holds potential for Twitter

In India, a large chunk of the population is using the micro blogging platform to convey their thoughts on everything, including social, political and economic issues. Stanton acknowledged the growing weight of emerging markets, saying that 78% of Twitter traffic comes from outside the U.S.

Stanton said, “India is a growing market, which can be ascertained by the fact that the Lok Sabha elections generated about 60 million tweets.”

Twitter is going the right way by pushing investments in India, a market where total Internet users will reach 302 million by December 2014. This number was given by the recent report “Internet in India 2014,” which was jointly published by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB International.

Execution still remains

In the meantime, analysts are sticking to their wait and see approach for Twitter shares. In a research note to investors following the company’s investor day, analyst Doug Anmuth at JPMorgan said that the company addressed its user growth problem without leaving anything to guesswork. Also during the meeting, the company laid plans to make the service more attractive for new users. Anmuth notes that Twitter talked about many things during the event, but management must execute.

Though Twitter has planned many new features, but analysts note that execution will surely take time. However, in the meantime, Twitter will have to deal with impatient investors who witnessed quick gains in the initial months after its initial public offering and now are seeing a decline in the value of their investments.

On Friday, Twitter shares closed up .55% at $40.03, and year to date, shares are down by around 37%.

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