InMobi's business-to-consumer (B2C) arm, 'Glance,' a SoftBank Group-backed advertising tech startup, is betting big on its newly announced 'Live' feature, which is featured on its lock screen. After text, pictures, photos, and long- and short-form videos, unicorn executives believe this is the next big frontier for content consumption on the internet.

According to Piyush Shah, Co-Founder, InMobi Group and Glance President and COO, Glance Live is a very realistic, real, and engaging content format for Gen Z (mid-to-late 1990s) to begin with. The move was expedited as a result of COVID, where we were all immersed in the digital world while yearning for a taste of the real world.

The objective is to have this enormous platform for live internet across categories, Shah continues, whether it's entertainment, live news, live sports, live fashion or beauty tips, live gaming, or, of course, live shopping and commerce.

All Live interactions will take place on the Glance lock screens, also known as screen-zero platforms, which are currently pre-installed on new Android handsets in India from companies such as Xiaomi (including POCO), Samsung, Vivo, and OPPO.

According to Counterpoint Research's Quarterly Mobile Application Tracker announced on September 21, Glance reached the milestone of 150 million active users in India in the second quarter of 2021. The result represents an increase of eight percent over the previous quarter. One in every four Indian smartphone users is now active on the Glance platform, which provides Android smartphone users with an interactive lock screen experience, according to the research.

Since a creator or publisher may go live for 30-35 minutes and ‘can't fake it’, according to Rohan Choudhary, GM of Glance and a founding member of the team, Live allows for a highly ‘genuine relationship’.

"It's a new content format where people can engage more, which is why we believe it's the next frontier on the internet because you can take any vertical. Whether it's current affairs, sports, movies, commerce, gaming, health, education, or astrology, add a flavor of live interaction to it and make it very exciting. There are 18 content categories in Glance, which is available in eight Indian languages as well as Bahasa (Indonesia) and Thai (Thailand)”, he adds.

According to Shah, ‘discovery’ is a major issue because you open apps at specific moments during the day, when there may be nothing that captures your attention. The lock screen, on the other hand, has an advantage since "it is a real estate that is with you the majority of the time during the day. Our lock screen has a very low opt-out rate”.

Glance's business model is divided into three categories: mobile advertising, creator- or influencer-driven commerce, and digital commerce. Shah notes that, InMobi excels at mobile-first advertising, but we had to unlearn a lot here as well to guarantee that the experience is extremely local to the Glance user",

He went on to say that the second section is focused on facilitating genuine e-commerce transactions through creators and resellers. "We conceive of artists as micro-business owners. If you have a passion for music, beauty, or fashion, you may generate wonderful content while also earning money from it. That's the second area in which we've made significant investments”.

The third segment of the business model is what Glance refers to as 'digital commerce,' which will allow a user to spend a small amount of money to interact with his or her favourite celebrity online and send a bouquet of roses to a celebrity or a virtual hug or shout out to a celebrity or just Rs.100 for a 30-minute master class on crypto for just Rs.100.

Although Glance is just three years old, it has been on an acquisition spree since its inception. It bought short video platform Roposo in 2019, e-commerce platform Shop101 in June 2021, and Glance Collective, a joint venture company with the Collective Artists Network, in July 2021, to co-create brands with celebrities and top creators. India's largest talent management agency and pop culture marketplace is Collective Artists Network.

To personalize and automate content across categories, the unicorn makes effective use of AI and machine learning (ML). Although almost all of the information on Glance is automated, roughly five percent is still monitored by people, which matters to us because it is the lock screen. As a result, we'll always be cautious there”, Shah says.