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.
Additional Information
Online user base reduced to 47 million in India.The ‘regular’ internet users have grown by only 10% (compared to 19% last year). Very few new occasional users have got added in the last 1 year and some of the existing occasional users appear to have ‘lapsed’. While the base of the ‘regular’ internet user has increased by only 3.5 million, the base of occasional users has fallen by almost 6.4 million.Though the overall base of online Indians has shrunk, on the positive side, 3 out of 4 internet users (70%) are now on the net ‘daily’. This ‘lively’ pool of internet user is 32.4 million strong. Only 1.8% of all Indians (20 million) prefer to read in English. Of these 5 million are already on the net (as 13% of regular online Indians prefer to read in English). This leaves only about 15 odd million Indians, who prefer to read in English, who can easily latch on to the internet in its current avatar, provided they can afford it and feel the need for it. Internet usage cuts across the more well-to-do Indians across the various socio-economic groups, across the urban-rural divide and across the various town classes within the urban landscape. 55% of regular internet users come from the ‘consuming classes’ (SEC A, B and R1), 71% of them come from the non-metro cities and villages, and 82% of them fall in the ‘prime life’ age group of 19-35 years.On ‘multiple’ access basis, place of work (office, school, colleges, etc.) still continues to be the single largest place for accessing internet at 68%. Usage form home follows next at 50% and then by cybercafés at 45%.
However, when it comes to the ‘single most preferred’ place of access, home (37%) scores over the office (30%) as well as cybercafé (15%) noticeably. 'Home' still remains the dominant place of access of internet. With 89% of regular online Indians searching for product information online, window shopping has become ‘synonymous’ with internet now. Communication, social interactivity and entertainment activities stand out as the other most popular online activities. The current ‘online shoppers’ base in India is 34.5 million, a good 6.5 million bigger than last year’s figure of 28 million. However, of all these online shoppers, only 22% (or 7.72 million) actually ‘buy’ online. The balance 78% online shoppers only search for products online and then probably buy them offline. Google is clearly the most popular website among online Indians, with 35% of all online Indians claiming to use this website the most amongst all the websites they use. Yahoo follows at second spot with 28% of all internet users using it the most. Gmail, Orkut and Rediff are the 3rd, 4th, and 5th most used websites in India.
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