A couple of days ago, I had a dispute in the comments about the popularity of Telegram in Asia, particularly in India.
My opponent confidently argued that Telegram is the most popular app in India.
I also came across this information in various sources.
However, equally convincing articles also refuted this information, claiming that the most popular social networks in India are WhatsApp, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and others.
In these articles, Telegram was not mentioned at all.
In all the articles I came across (and there are more than two dozen English-language articles on various queries), there were no links to research sources, or appeals to how exactly the information was obtained.
Then I decided to go further.
And use Google Translate to search for information in Hindi.
Unfortunately, all I found were similarly unverified sources.
However, with the query "popular social networks India" I found everything except Telegram.
Nevertheless.
I decided to change my approach.
If Telegram is the most popular app in India.
So, can I find many popular Indian channels on Telegram itself?
In the end, what difference does it make how many people downloaded it? Real usage is much more important.
For comparison: Searching for Moscow on Telegram found several channels with millions of subscribers.
With the query Delhi (in two languages) - I found groups of 5-10 thousand people.
Other queries on popular topics (sports, girls, memes, movies, etc.) yielded similar results. For many queries (which I duplicated in Hindi and English), nothing was found either.
To be fair: I found several popular channels in Hindi with a million subscribers on Telegram.
However.
I did not feel the sense of a large community at all.
In 2024, the trend on Telegram was tapalki (notcoin, hamsterkombat).
Official hamsterkombat chat India - 21 thousand subscribers.
For comparison: the Russian chat - 120 thousand.
The population difference between these two countries is more than 1.2 billion people in favor of India.
I did not find Notcoin communities in India. Rather, I found a few dead chats with a couple of dozen people.
At this point, I got lazy to continue. As a final step - I will try to talk to a few people in the chats I found and ask them their opinion on how widespread Telegram is. If I succeed - I will share the results here.
I will not make any conclusions, I do not claim to have conducted a comprehensive study. I do not wish to believe articles on the internet without argumentation.
If you manage to find a huge Telegram community in India - I would be happy to change my opinion. I do not live in India and may have done something wrong.
Instead of an epilogue, a quote from Joseph Stalin at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: "Don't believe articles on the Internet."
