With over 560 million internet users, India is the second largest online market

It was estimated that by 2023, there would be over 650 million internet users the country.

Despite the large base of internet users, the internet penetration rate in the country stood at around 50 percent in 2020.

This meant that around half of the 1.37 billion Indians had access to internet that year.

There has been a consistent increase in internet accessibility compared to just five years ago, when the internet penetration rate was around 27 percent.

-India’s digital population-
However, internet accessibility and use in the country largely varied based on factors like gender and socio-economic divide.

It was estimated that in 2020, there were over 300 million internet users in rural India compared to 335 million urban internet users.

But it is worth mentioning that the majority of Indian internet users were between 20 and 29 years of age, and a slightly higher proportion of these users were from rural parts.

At the same time, there were far more male internet users in the country compared to female users.

And this digital gender gap only increased further in the rural hinterlands compared to urban metros.

A majority of India’s digital population accessed the internet via their mobile phones.

By 2023, the mobile internet user penetration was expected to grow to over 35 percent, or approximately 500 million users by 2023.

An increased availability of cheap data plans along with various government initiatives under the Digital India campaign worked together to make mobile the primary internet access in the country.

Notably, 4G networks were the most widely used across urban and rural India in 2019.

-Internet users in India compared to the world-
One aspect where India shares the characteristics of other global internet users is its passion for social media.

The country thrives on social media usage in terms of time spent on smartphones.

Furthermore, the share of Indian population that access social networks is expected to jump to over 31 percent in 2023.

Facebook was the most popular social networking site in the country.

In fact, with about 340 million Facebook users in the country, India had the largest Facebook user base in the world as of 2021.
CT Bureau