Photo and video-sharing platform Instagram on Wednesday said that it is testing ‘Instagram Lite’ app in India, before it rolls out globally. Earlier, the company had tested and rolled out many new features in India first, including its short video “Instagram Reels”.
“India is an important market for us and has been a testing ground for innovation… India was one of the first few countries where we tested Reels, and the first country where we launched the Reels tab…In order to expand the appeal of Instagram to users across the country, today we’re announcing the test of Instagram Lite in India,” Vishal Shah, Vice President- Product, Instagram at Facebook, said at the Facebook Fuel for India, 2020 event.
Shah added that ‘Instagram Lite’ occupies less space and is less than two megabytes in size. It has been built to provide access and high quality experience without consuming much data to users in India, irrespective of the device platform and network that they are on.
The user experience on the new app is similar to the full version app, although there are some features that are currently not available on the lite version such as Reels, Shopping and IGTV. The app is available in different regional languages including Bangla, Kannada, Malayalam, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.
Facebook and other social media companies like LinkedIn and Twitter also offers similar lighter apps for helping users to access key features of the platform with lower data consumption and faster loading time.