There is a vacuum in the social media market in India today, which has led to millions of creators and users to flock to homegrown user-generated content (UGC) platforms, which in turn has led Indian social media companies to witness demand and scale like never before. In this journey of scaling up to meet demand and further growth, the role of tech infrastructure, security and sustainable growth strategies are taking centrestage. To understand the challenges of building the right workflows and tech stack, adopt best security practices, build the right tech infrastructure for sustainable growth, and more, Gobi Tarmat, Director of Presales, Media & Carrier Division, APJ, Akamai, led this interactive masterclass with some of India’s leading homegrown social media platforms.The speakers included Arun Lodhi, CTO, Trell; Anish Khandelwa, Co-founder and CTO, Mitron; Aditya Kumar, Principal Engineer, Leher; Varun Saxena, Co-founder and CEO, Bolo Indya and Sameer Kumar, CTO, Tna Tan India.The focus of Gobi’s presentation was on how to build a sustainable social media business today, and the core business strategies around acquisition, engagement and retention. This starts from app experience, video workflow and performance, user privacy and content protection, and how Akamai can help resolve these challenges.The presentation was followed by a lively discussion between Gobi and the speakers on key challenges and focus areas of these social media platforms - from workflows and tech stacks to content monetisation to privacy and security.The speakers also concurred that keeping users at the centre of the product was crucial and that over- engineering the product or solution can in fact be detrimental. They also discussed how parameters like the time taken for uploading videos, reducing battery and data consumption and content protection, among others, are key to building a successful social media company.