India Internet & Web Statistics – 2008

Last updated October 008: A quick look at Indian Internet & Web related fact & figures updated on a weekly basis. Covers Internet infrastructure in India, Internet & Web trend in India, Search & Search engine marketing in India, Ecommerce trends & growth in India and Online advertising market in India. Please  feel to recommend stats and corrections to this post.

Internet Infrastructure & Trends in India:

• India has an estimated 32-46 million active Internet users. – Sify
• India has just 4.38 million broadband subscribers, while there are 287 million mobile users and 38.9 million landline subscribers -  AFP
• India has only two unique Internet Protocol (IP) addresses per 1,000 people – Sify
• A study by web application acceleration and performance management major Akamai saw 2.1 million unique IPs from India. With this, India ranked 14th in terms of unique IPs – Sify
• The percentage of broadband connections from India with speeds above 5 Mbps (high broadband) and 2 Mbps (broadband) were 0.6 percent and 4.6 percent respectively – Sify
• The percentage of connections with speeds less than 256 Kbps from India was 26 percent, meaning nearly one-fourth of users use slower-speed lines to get on to the net. - Sify
• In India, the survey was conducted with over 120 companies and the findings revealed that as compared to 40% of Asia Pacific companies, 46% of Indian companies provide branch offices with direct Internet access. However, more than 50% of branch office internet traffic is still backhauled over the Wide Area Network, and 70% of companies would want to provide the same level of protection at the branch office as in headquarters or data centers. – India PR Wire
• The country’s 1.1 billion inhabitants only have one broadband connection for every 400 people – Fiercetelecom
• 70 percent of broadband connection cost is tied up in government permit expenses, creating a scenario complete with high end-user cost and miniscule profit margin potential – Fiercetelecom
• Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) is planning to extend its broadband services to all areas of India by March 2009. BSNL currently claims to cover 30,000 villages and 3,261 cities, and the operator expects coverage to increase to 148,000 and 5,000 respectively by March next year. BSNL also annonced to connect 5,000 rural blocks to wireless broadband with support from the Universal Service Obligation (USO) fund – Telegeography
• Broadband Forecasting – Internet broadband penetration will limp along to eventually reach a measly 3.9 connections for every 100 citizens by 2012. Even though internet users may be multiple times higher, actual broadband penetration will not exceed 18.1 million at the beginning of the next decade. In contrast, mobile telephony will add as many as 350 million subscribers during this five-year period to end at roughly 615 million by mid 2012.These forecasts fall short of the government’s conservative target of 20 million high-speed internet subscribers by 2010-end . India’s broadband penetration is roughly 4.5 million subscribers. Even with a 300% growth rate over the next five years, the sector will fall short of the 50 million mark by 2012. – ET
• India One of the Fastest-Growing Internet Populations among 37 Countries Reported. – comScore
• Internet usage from Rural India accounts to 20% – Medianewsline

Web:

• Slight confusion here – 46 / 49 million Internet Users and 35 million active net users.- WATblog
• LodeStar Universal estimates that there are 17.8 million active Internet users in the 16-54 age group in India, many of whom would have also used tools, such as instant messaging and discussion forums. Around 15.1 million or 85% of such Indians read blogs online, while 15 million users watch video clips. The case in favour of taking your small business online is compelling -ET
• The average Indian Internet user visited the Internet 25 times during the month and was online for 28 minutes per visit. Those between the ages of 15-24 were the heaviest Internet users among all age segments, spending nearly 12 hours online per month on average. Some of the fastest growing Web site categories during the past year included Maps (up 64 percent), Sports (up 60 percent), Entertainment – Movies (up 55 percent), and Finance – News/Research (up 52 percent). – comScore
• 1) Over two-thirds (70%) of all Internet users reside outside metros 2) Over 70% internet users prefer to access the net in Indian languages, with English users at just 28%, down from 41% in 2007 (this means that people would want to ‘read’ in regional languages) 3) Women account for less than a fifth, just 17.6%, of the 49-million odd Indian netizens. 4) On an average, net users take 15 odd activities which includes chatting, emailing, downloading music and movies, sharing videos and pictures, checking cricket score, job and matrimonial search. Social networking, picture and video sharing, online communities and Internet chatting and blogs are significant for 81% of the users. – WATblog citing JuxtConsult report.
• Top 10 Indian Mobile sites – through MiniOpera’s usage stats – track.in
• Around 70 per cent of Internet users in India have registered with a social networking site. People in the age bracket 18-34 are members of social networking sites. About 70 per cent of them are in the age band 18-27. – Sindh Today

Search in India

• SEM industry is likely to double in size to $225 million by 2009-10 – HT
• According to a recent report by internet research firm JuxtConsult, Indian market has seen 19% increase in the regular internet users this year over 2007, and boasts of an active 8-million online buyers. While mobile and computer products were the most searched last year, books, clothes and CDs/DVDs are the most bought products. – ET
• India ranked second to last with 53 searches per searcher during the month, well below the worldwide average of 93. India also had significantly fewer search visits per searcher (14.7 vs. 23.6) and searches per search visit (3.6 vs. 3.9). – comScore
• Though India represents more than 15 percent of the world’s population, it accounts for less than 2 percent of global Internet searches – comScore
• An IAMAI (Internet and Mobile Association of India) and IMRB (Indian Market Research Bureau) report pegs the total market revenue of the SEM industry in India at around Rs 500 crore in 2007-08. This is expected to increase to around Rs 1,000 crore by 2009-2010. – Business Standard

Ecommerce in India:

• India’s e-commerce market crossed over Rs 9,000 crore last fiscal year – The Daily Star
• India’s e-commerce market is growing at a rapid clip. With 42-50% CAGR projected for the next five years, e-Travel (including hospitality) is the biggest contributor – Express Computer
• In terms of value, nearly $3.6 billion (about Rs16,600 crore) worth of rail tickets were booked over counters or through regular agents in 2007-08. Online bookings accounted for about $377 million (Rs1,738 crore), according to analysts. – LiveMint
• Payment statistics from IRCTC for March 2008. On Nilesh’s blog. [via StartupDunia]. Compiled set of graphs from the latest payment statistics released by Indian Railways IRCTC website for the month of March 2008.
• More than half of domestic airline tickets sold in India will be online by end of this year, predicts leading travel industry research firm PhoCusWright Inc., up from 43% in 2007 – LiveMint
• Even at a 3 per cent conversion of every mobile bill payer onto a mCommerce solution, the industry would be worth around Rs 3,000 crore, estimates Mr Sanjay Swamy, CEO, mChek (www.mchek.com) – Hindu

Online Advertising in India

• GroupM’s Annual Forecast Says India Will Become World’s 15 th Largest Ad Market in 2009 Advertising spending in India is on a roll. – Medianewsline
• The total online advertising market in India is projected at Rs 420 crore in 2008, according to FICCI-PricewaterhouseCoopers, will grow to a whopping Rs 1,100 crore by 2011. – Financial Express
• Advertising expenditures in all media throughout India will increase 20 percent in 2008 to $5.6 billion and 19 percent in 2009 to $6.6 billion. The projected hikes follow a 20 percent increase in 2007. – Medianewsline
• IAMAI estimates that the size of the online banner advertising market in 2007-08 will be Rs 235 crore. The agency expects it to grow by almost 49 per cent to Rs 350 crore by the end of 2008-09. – TelevisionPoint
• In 2007-08, a total of 1.23 crore people clicked on an online advertisement. This was a substantial increase from 56 per cent for the year 2005-2006 – TelevisionPoint
• Banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), online businesses and information technology-enabled services (ITES) with 25 per cent, 25 per cent and 13 per cent shares respectively, were the leading advertisers in the 2008 fiscal.The other major categories are auto, FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) and consumer durables. The education category is expected to show the fastest growth from 4 per cent to 7 per cent. This is possibly because this category targets the youth segment.- TelevisionPoint
• The online banner ad spend per Internet user is only about $ 1.20 (Rs 52.50), which could be $ 1.60 (Rs 70) by the end of the year – TelevisionPoint
• People are increasingly noticing online banners. In 2006, 56 per cent of the active Internet users clicked on an online ad. In 2007, this figure was 80 per cent. Computed on a base figure of 15.4 million, this implies that 12.3 million people clicked on an ad in 2007, the report says. – TelevisionPoint
• Conversion of ads were around 4.3 per cent bought hotels and holiday packages, 3.8 per cent acquired loans from banks and 1.4 per cent bought computers, laptops, printers or scanners.- TelevisionPoint

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1. India Internet & Web Statistic and Trends 2010-11
2. Pew Internet Report : The State of Online Video
3. Happy Birthday Dotcom and here's to your commercial success in next 25 years
4. The Internet's impact on Institutions of the Future
5. Pew Internet’s report on Government Online & Public Data Access

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Tags: India, internet, statistics, web