Twitter Blue price in India: Here’s what you might end up paying for a Twitter blue tick

Twitter is undergoing a sea of changes in an extremely short period. One of these significant changes is the introduction of a new Twitter Blue subscription, which puts a price tag on the coveted Twitter verification mark. The price tag has been revealed for the US market at $8 per month. But how much is it for Indian users? A direct conversion will yield a price of around Rs 650. However, that will surely not be the final price. Musk has confirmed that the pricing will be decided in accordance with the purchasing power parity of each country. 
 
In that case, what will Indians end up paying for Twitter Blue? Even though the final prices haven’t been revealed we can estimate the price range of the subscription-based service by adjusting $8 using the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) calculations. 

Price adjusted by country proportionate to purchasing power parity

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 1, 2022

 
What is Purchasing Power Parity?
 
The International Monetary Fund terms PPP as the rate at which one country's currency would have to be converted into that of another country to buy the same amount of goods and services. 
 
To understand it better, we can also use the example of Spotify, a music streaming service that is available in many countries including both US and India. In the United States, the app charges a fee of $9.99 (roughly Rs 830) for a month of streaming music. The same platform charges Rs 119 (roughly $1.45) for the premium subscription. That is a direct price cut in the amount of money going into the platform’s pocket, a difference of around 86 per cent. However, it is to be noted that there might be some differences in the services, which could increase or decrease the price difference. 
 
Apart from just PPP, companies like Spotify could further reduce prices to attract new users and gain volume. To get a better idea, we can use some PPP calculators that give us a more accurate idea of what you might end up paying for Twitter Blue and the blue tick in India. 
 
According to a salary converter tool that uses open-source MIT-licensed code, the adjusted price is Rs 159.82. The data used in the code is sourced from World Bank. Considering the constant flux in foreign exchange rates and rising inflation, this number can easily go up. To conclude, the PPP calculations for the conversions can land in a range of Rs 150- Rs 200 for every month of a Twitter Blue subscription.
 
Readers are advised to take this number with a grain of salt as many more factors go into deciding the final price. 
 
How is PPP calculated?

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has explained that the calculation of PPP is done in three stages. At the first stage, which is at the product level, the price relatives are calculated for individual goods and services. For instance, a litre of Coca-Cola costs €2.3 in France and $2 in the United States then the PPP for Coca-Cola between France and the USA is 2.3/2.00, or 1.15. This means that for every dollar spent on a litre of Coca-Cola in the USA, 1.15 euros would have to be spent in France to obtain the same quantity and quality.
 
In the second stage, which is at the product group level, the price relatives calculated for the products in the group are averaged to obtain unweighted PPPs for the group. Coca-cola is for example included in the product group “Softdrinks and Concentrates”.
 
And the third stage is at the aggregation levels, where the PPPs for the product groups covered by the aggregation level are weighted and averaged to obtain weighted PPPs for the aggregation level up to GDP (for example, aggregated levels are Non-alcoholic beverages, Food…). 
 
The weights used to aggregate the PPPs in the third stage are the expenditures on the product groups as established in the national accounts.