The India Online study helps in understanding the status and net usage behavior and preferences of online Indians. It not only provides the most recent estimates on the Internet user-ship, growth and penetration in India but also gives a highly ‘insightful’ understanding of the current net usage behavior and preferences of various types of online Indians.
Online user base touching 50 million in India, 1 in 5 users coming from rural areas. The total base of internet users in India stands at 49.4 million currently. 82% of online Indians come from the urban areas and 18% from the rural areas. At these levels, the penetration of internet stands at 4.5% of the total population of India. Net is the ‘dominant’ medium in the homes of online Indians.
Almost 9 out of 10 regular internet users accessing the net from home or place of work do so ‘daily’ (though only 33% of cyber café based internet users access the net on daily basis). More importantly, Internet users who access the net from home tend to be relatively ‘heavier’ users of the internet as compared to the ‘offline’ mediums (TV, newspaper and radio). Regular internet users tend to be the lightest users of radio, followed by newspaper and then TV.
Internet usage in India has shown a healthy growth in last one year. More importantly, it is showing clear signs of evolving and becoming the ‘dominant medium’ of interacting with the world for a good proportion of the regular online Indians. It is increasingly becoming more and more relevant and meaningful in their ‘personal’ lives (and not just their work lives). However, online buying has not really picked as much this year, making net more of a ‘window shop’ rather than an ‘online market’ in any true sense of the word (except for the travel products maybe).The fact that the bulk of Indian consumer mass comes from the vernacular Indian world, the increasing usage of local language websites is one of the most important elements of internet usage to watch for in the future.
Availability of relevant and meaningful local language content and applications on the net, together with affordable access, may become the biggest enabler (or the biggest limiting factor) in the future growth of Internet usage in India.
- JuxtConsult, June 2008
- JuxtConsult, June 2008
