The ban of TikTok in India left many content creators in a fix of what’s next. In a bid to tap into the short video market and capture the ex-users of TikTok, Instagram Reels has made a glorious entry in India - just in time. Since Wednesday, Indian users of the Instagram application have received its latest update - none other than “Reels”. What exactly is Instagram reels? What does it have in store for you? Let us find out.

What is “Reels”?

Reels, a part of the already existing Instagram app, is a newly introduced feature which allows users to create short videos upto 15 seconds. Reels has various features like choosing the speed of the video, adding effects, songs and also 1000s of filters to choose from. However, it is said that Reels is still under the testing phase. Currently, it is only available on the mobile version of the app and not the desktop version.

How does Reels work?

To create your very own Reels, all you need to do is open your Instagram stories camera and choose the ‘Reels’ option. To make it creative, Instagram gives you the option to choose from 1000s of filters, songs and do much more.

The videos can be shared to your stories, add them to a dedicated tab on your profile or slide it directly into a specific user’s DMs.

What makes Reels different from IGTV apart from the video duration, is that you don’t need to use too many relevant hashtags to reach your desired audience. If your account is public, you reels appear on the explore page of others, based on what they usually view or like or show interest in. Although, you can still use hashtags to get your videos featured on a particular page.

To view Reels, just tap on the explore page and voila, it would be there right in front of you. When you are done watching a Reels video, the next video will automatically be shown to you based on your interests. But there is no dedicated search specifically for Reels. One can also not know what is currently trending or about the new challenges happening like they did on TikTok.

Reels vs TikTok - A rundown

To get a brief idea about TikTok Vs Reels, let us consider the following factors:

1. Features :

With Reels, one can without a doubt, hop onto the Instagram app as it is loaded with features like TikTok. Users can choose from 1000+ filters, in-app songs, pace of the video, etc. For a solo artist, the app is great because Reels gives you a timer before starting the recording. In addition to it all, Instagram is also a one stop shop for sharing pictures, longer videos (IGTV) and shopping too.

What Reels has missed out is the availability of Indian languages in the app. At present, it supports only Hindi, a downside of which is that it cannot capture a vast majority of the regional content creators. Also, the editing tools of Reels, which is not as advanced compared to TikTok, content creators are going to have to rely on other editing apps to get their desired results. Another feature missing is the popular Duet feature, which was widely used for collaborations among TikTok users.

2. Quantum of users :

India was the largest market for TikTok outside of China, with over 200 million active monthly users, prior to the app's ban. In 2020, TikTok added a whopping 88 million users from India alone. Worldwide, TikTok has over 800 million active monthly users and has been downloaded over 1.5 billion times.

Meanwhile, Instagram, which is backed by Facebook has 165 million active users in India and globally over 1 billion active monthly active users. In terms of number of downloads, TikTok surpassed Instagram. However, this does not mean that TikTok is necessarily bigger than Instagram in every term.

3. User Interface & Experience :

While Instagram's effort to capture the short video market is applaudable, many users have claimed that it is not quite close to the ease of things TikTok provided.

This hurdle could be owing to the fact that unlike Instagram, TikTok is a dedicated app, for a dedicated purpose. Users have complained of feeling the app to be cluttered due to the addition of reels as a mere feature instead of launching a separate app itself.

On another note, the reason Reels was launched as a feature instead of an all new app could be due to the failure of Lasso - an app which was launched by Facebook - to attract users for creating TikTok like content.

4. Privacy :

Reels, being an in-app feature of Instagram is protected by the safety features of Instagram. As Instagram is backed by Facebook, there seems to be no fear of the data being shared with the Chinese government or its agencies.

Unlike TikTok where every video you posted was public, the same is not the case with Reels. To make your Reels videos visible to a large audience, you would have to switch your Instagram account to “Public”. This would create quite a hitch among users who are not full-time content creators, because it defeats the entire purpose of why their profiles were kept private in the first place.

5. Reach:

While Instagram beats TikTok in terms of user base, what could be a tad bit of a challenge for it is to get the Tier 2 & 3 population of India on board with Reels. Because TikTok was easier to use, people from all age groups - kids, teens, parents and grandparents - were consuming and creating content on it.

With the introduction of reels as a feature instead of a dedicated app, Instagram has become more complex, even for those using it since its inception. If Instagram is able to tap into this market, it would be a milestone in itself. How it plans to do it, is still unknown, but one thing we know is it is leaving no stone unturned to capture India’s massive short video market.

Ever since the ban of TikTok in India, many home-grown TikTok rivals like Chingari, Roposo and Moj have been gaining immense popularity day by day. The upper hand that these apps have over Reels is that they are a dedicated app, and cater well to India’s regional markets and provide easy to use tools for video editing.

Since Reels is not yet available globally, Indian content creators are skeptical if they would have the same exposure globally like they did with TikTok. Yet, Reels has the capability to become the new TikTok in India.

Although Reels missed out on various things, it has got the basics right in creating TikTok like features. In easy terms, similarity between Instagram Reels and TikTok is just like the similarity between Instagram stories and Snapchat. Just like Instagram stories worked out way better than expected, Reels could possibly follow the same.

Over-time, we would be able to see if Instagram struck the chord perfectly to fill the void that the ban of TikTok has created among Indians.