India Leads Mental Health App Usage

September 14 2020

A lot of fitness apps were downloaded during the lockdown. You might see all of your friends doing the same. But by far, the biggest download and the most increase in daily active users happen in India. The country now leads in the category.

With a favorable demographic, the right user economics, no wonder Indian has been the black horse in the race.

India saw the highest increase in downloads, rising by 156%. That translates to 58 million new active users—almost the entire population of Italy.

This makes sense considering that India had the largest lockdown in the world—from March 25 to May 2020, 1.3 billion people were instructed to stay inside. That’s a lot of people who, quite suddenly, found themselves homebound.

Along with a surge in downloads, fitness apps also saw a rise in daily active users (DAUs). This is significant because it shows people weren’t just downloading these apps and forgetting about them—they were actually using them.

As with downloads, India saw the largest increase in DAUs with an 84% increase, or 12 million new users. MENA saw the second-highest growth (which also aligns with downloads) at 28%.

In contrast, the Americas saw the smallest increase at just 8%—but this also may be a function of having more users to start with. Despite the lower growth rate than other regions, those who did adopt fitness apps in the Americas seemed to enjoy them, particularly in the United States.

As for categories of fitness, you might be in for a surprise. You might guess it is the at-home weight lifting and cardio. However, mental health was value more during this pandemic than physical health.

Pandemic download was focused on mindfulness and meditation more than active workouts. Calm, an app for sleep, meditation, and relaxation, was the highest-grossing app at $8.5 million. Another popular mindfulness app came in second place—Headspace grossed $5.5 million. MyFitnessPal, used for tracking your diet and exercise, ranked third.

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Lockdown Fitness Top Performers:

Calm, named the 2017 iPhone app of the year by Apple itself, promises to help users sleep better, boost confidence and reduce stress and anxiety, all with the help of guided meditations, soothing music, and bedtime stories.

Headspace is an English-American online healthcare company, specializing in meditation. It was incorporated in May 2010 in London, England, by Andy Puddicombe and Richard Pierson. It is headquartered in Santa Monica, California, with offices in San Francisco and London.

MyFitnessPal is a smartphone app and website that tracks diet and exercise. The app uses gamification elements to motivate users. To track nutrients, users can either scan the barcodes of various food items or manually find them in the app's large pre-existing database.

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