New York, Oct 28 (IANS): Swedish music streaming app Spotify on Monday said it grew rapidly in India in terms of monthly active users, outperforming its forecast by 30 per cent.

Globally, Spotify's monthly active users grew 30 per cent year-over-year to 248 million, outperforming the high end of its guidance.

"Developing regions continue to be a significant driver of this outperformance," Spotify said in a letter to investors.

"Of note, India outperformed our forecast by 30 per cent this quarter. This momentum was driven by a number of factors including the launch of our first broad-based marketing campaign, 'Sunte Ja' (Listen On), since launch in February," the company said.

The number of its premium subscribers globally grew 31 per cent in the third quarter of this year to 113 million.

"Net subscriber growth exceeded our expectations and was led by strong performance in both Family Plan and Student Plan. All other product offerings were mostly in line with expectations," Spotify said.

The company which saw "exponential growth" in podcast hours streamed, posted an operating profit of euro 54 million.

"For music listeners who do engage in podcasts, we are seeing increased engagement and increased conversion from Ad-Supported to Premium," Spotify said.

The results of the music streaming apps suggest that it has been able to check competition from Apple.

"We continue to feel very good about our competitive position in the market. Relative to Apple, the publicly available data shows that we are adding roughly twice as many subscribers per month as they are," Spotify said.

--IANS

gb/bg