Telegram Premium has surpassed 1 million subscribers while reaching 700 million in total, its founder and CEO Pavel Durov has shared. The app achieved the milestone in just a year after introducing the paid version of the service.
To be more specific, Telegram Premium was launched five months ago which makes the 1 million base milestone surprisingly impressive.
“While it still represents just a fraction of Telegram’s overall revenue, Telegram Premium is growing steadily every day, and one day may even rival our ads,” said Durov.
The paid version of the app is more privacy-focused, one of the key reasons which helped it amass a large base within months. The app can almost credit its staggering adoption to its rival WhatsApp whose data-sharing policy inspired an outcry and an exodus. Many users turned to Telegram.
The cloud-based Instant Messaging (IM) app reached 63.5 million downloads in January 2021. It is 283% up from 2020. The company says it has now 700 million users globally. In India alone, the app has over 120 million users. In October, the subscription cost was also lowered to Rs 179 from 469 acknowledging the higher potential the app has in the country.
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The future looks solid for the app
“The future looks exciting. The additional monetization strategies I discussed in my previous posts are already bearing fruit, and the features we are working on now will set the foundation for further financial growth for Telegram in 2023,” he mentioned.
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What is Telegram Premium?
Telegram Premium is the company’s elevated paid version which brings more features and privacy features. It brings to users 20 folders, 1,000 channels, and four connected accounts. Users also send and download files up to 4 GB in size at a faster speed. Users can buy the Premium version of the app from $4 to $6.
“While some other apps consider their users a tool to maximize revenue, we consider revenue a tool to maximize value for our users,” he said.
