Social Media in India: Statistics & Insights

Sahiel Shah is an Account Manager with WAT Consult– An online marketing agency based in Mumbai, India. He deals with strategic planning, execution and management of online marketing campaigns for brands.

Recently I made a presentation on Social Media Marketing Trends in India 2010 – 2011 and the same inspired me to look out for how exactly is social media impacting India and what are the current trends that are evolving in the Indian social media space.

Unsurprisingly, Facebook and Orkut are the top two social networks in India. The interesting element is that most of the social networking activities happen between 6 pm and 10 pm. In other words, Indian online users aren’t using social media during work hours (which is usually an assumed fact). It is a simple but key insight that will significantly boost any social media marketing campaign’s ROI.

Here is a list of top Indian Social Networks:

Top 5 Social Network in India

Some worthwhile Statistics to look at:

• 60% of the social networking traffic come from Non Metro-Cities but the highest traffic generating city still remains to be a Metro i.e. Mumbai
• The highest number of active users are from the 15-24 age group but LinkedIn has a different age group of active users i.e. 25-34 age-group
• The male-female ratio shows consistency with the overall population break-up by gender i.e. 80:20 in favor of males
• Social media in India reaches out to 60 per cent of the online Indian audience
• Facebook and Orkut, together cater to about 90 per cent of the users in the social media space.
• Facebook is the only social network in India that has witnessed a tremendous growth, almost doubling its users in the last 6 months.
• Highest number of active social media audience in India are in the age group of 15-24 and are graduates who are looking for a Job or planning further studies
• The maximum users come from the ‘less than 2 lakhs p.a.’ income category. This is because social networks are primarily driven by the youth
• More than 45% of the users on Social Networks return during the day. Facebook tops the list with users re-visiting more than 3 times during a day
• Majority of the time spent by the Indian audience on Facebook is on Interactive Games/Applications and then on viewing Photos

Now that you have gotten a better understanding of the Indian social media landscape, I believe you’re better equip to reach your target audience. After all, conversations is the key when it comes to social media marketing (I’m assuming that your have a great product). Feel free to post your questions about the Indian market under the comments section below. I’ll answer them within my best ability.