Features

India Goes Territorial on the Web

By Priya George

India is fast becoming a lucrative segment of the global Internet market. With 1.1 billion people, India is second to China in terms of population. When compared to the vast Indian population, Internet users seem like a measly pocket of people, but that statistic is fast changing with more people going online.

Fig. 1: Internet Usage and Population Statistics (Courtesy: comScore Networks)

According to comScore Networks, the total online population in India measured in terms of people aged over 15 years accessing the Internet increased to 7.8 per cent to 18.02 million in June, from 16.71 million three months ago in March.

India’s growth is higher than the world online population growth of 2.7 per cent. There are 713 million people above 15 online in June, up from 694 million in March this year.

India has also become the ninth biggest country in terms of the total online population, up from its 10th position three months ago. The US has retained its top slot with 153 million of web users. The survey excluded people who go online at cyber cafes or using mobile phones.

China witnessed the second-biggest growth rate during the same period at 5.22 percent, said the company based in Reston, Virginia.

A recent study by ACNielsen has revealed that Indians are taking to shopping online, and importantly, the frequency of the country's online purchases is beating the global average. "The study clearly showed an upward trend in global online shopping," said NS Muthukumaran, director and head of Internet research at ACNielsen in India. "But compared to their global counterparts, Indians have claimed a relatively high (5.2) number of purchases in their most recent month of online purchases. This is higher than the global average of 4.9 purchases."

"India's online population may be a small proportion of its population but it represents a set of consumers that offer marketers a winning combination -- greater affluence and the willingness to adopt technology faster," it added.

And according to Pavan Duggal, Supreme Court advocate and president, Cyberlaws.Net, even as India has all the e-commerce laws in place, "the country's legal infrastructure is not ready to cope with the projected growth." For instance, many Indian states are still unwilling to accept online trading as a part of IT-enabled services (a sector that enjoys exemptions from local taxes) and try to apply tax applicable for physical trading.

On the other hand, many Indians share the belief that there is also large room for improvement because network infrastructures and bandwidth are constantly improving in with technology hubs developing and major companies investing in India, like, recently, Google.

Fig. 2: Percentage of Population who have Access to the Internet (Courtesy: comScore Networks)