India grows into major Canva market as users make 2.5 million designs daily

New Delhi: India has become one of the fastest-growing markets for Canva, the Australia-based graphic design platform, which sees strong user traction driven by creators, students, and rising adoption of AI features, according to the company’s country manager, Chandrika Deb.

“Canva is the world’s largest design platform today and India is actually one of our top markets that is driving growth for Canva,” Deb said in an interview.

India currently ranks as Canva’s fourth-largest market by user base. Indians have created over 2.8 billion designs on the platform so far, with about 2.5 million new designs generated daily.

“We’ve also been consistently one of the fastest-growing markets. So we’ve been growing at a strong double-digit growth over the last 2–3 years,” Deb noted.

The country’s expanding digital ecosystem and large creator community have contributed significantly to this growth. 

“We have one of the world’s largest student communities, we have one of the world’s largest creator communities as well. So we definitely see India rising in the ranks... and all our investments are in that range,” she said.

Canva’s AI-led features, including Magic Write, Translate, and Magic Design, have seen widespread use in India. “...Be it Canva AI, which we launched a few months back, whether it’s all the features that we have, like magic write, translate, magic design. So tremendous growth coming from India across segments, creators, educators, small businesses, consumers, knowledge workers, across the spectrum, we’re seeing that there’s a lot of emphasis on design and people are really engaging in using Canva in their everyday lives, whether it’s for work or personal use,” Deb observed.

Recognising the mobile-first nature of India’s internet users, the company has focused on developing features suited for design on-the-go. “We’ve launched various hyper-local content on the platform, whether it’s weddings, whether it’s festivals, really understanding what the use cases of Indian users are,” she added.

Canva’s local strategy includes short-term subscription options and partnerships with institutions and government bodies. “We have been building a lot of strategic partnerships whether that’s with government partners, small business communities to really see how we can empower specifically the education and small business communities to really scale their design operations and their design needs,” she said.

The company recently collaborated with NCERT on a teacher certification programme to integrate design thinking into classrooms. It also works with over 500 Indian creators to co-develop local content for its design library.

Deb said these localisation efforts have helped strengthen Canva’s position in India. “Our mission is to reach every user in India, empower them to design, and educate them about the various features that we have. And so we’ve invested a lot in hyper-local brand building... Apart from that, we’ve also been investing in building a truly local product. And what that means is empowering Indian users to be able to find content that is most relevant to them culturally, linguistically, socio-economically,” she added.