Indians spend more time on the internet than the Chinese (INFOGRAPHIC)

Photo credit: Fawx Mixing.

Only a little over a quarter of India’s 1.32 billion people are connected to the internet, compared to nearly half of China’s 1.38 billion people. But here’s the interesting part: Indians spend nearly four-and-a-half hours a day on the internet, which is a full hour more than the Chinese, according to global digital stats released this week by We Are Social.

Mobile internet users in India spend over three hours online, compared to two-and-a-half hours by the Chinese. And Indians spend over two-and-a quarter hours a day on social media compared to an hour-and-a-half by the Chinese.

This represents a potential gold mine for internet and mobile businesses targeting the huge Indian market. There’s more headroom for growth. Over 70 percent of the population is yet to come online. Also, less than a quarter of the 1.3 billion people are active on online shopping sites.

The ones already online spend more time on the internet than their counterparts in neighboring China, going by the trends so far. Couple that with the speed with which mobile and internet use is growing in India, and you’ll understand why tech entrepreneurs and investors remain gung-ho about India, amidst talk of a global slowdown.

Another telling stat from We Are Social is that two-thirds of the online traffic in India is mobile, way more than the global average of 39 percent. The only other Asian country with a comparable level of mobile internet usage is Indonesia. Not surprisingly, when Google launched a new accelerator for mobile startups earlier this month, two-thirds of the first batch came from India and Indonesia.