India to overtake US next month with 402 million internet users

Photo by Maciej Dakowicz

The number of internet users in India will reach 402 million next month, nearly 50 percent more than what it was last year, according to a study by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and IMRB International. With the latest surge, India will overtake the US to have the second-largest internet user base in the world, next only to China. This will be music to the ears of mobile and internet-based businesses targeting the fast-growing digital market in India.

It took a decade for India to move from 10 million internet users to 100 million, but only four years to quadruple that figure. The primary driver of this takeoff is the boom in affordable smartphones over the past couple of years. But two-thirds of India’s population remain outside the internet, and broadband availability is poor. Most people still access the internet on outdated 2G networks. So there’s a lot more scope for improvement in India’s digital infrastructure.

Gender divide

There is also a stark gender divide, with less than 30 percent of internet users being women. The rate of growth among male and female users is roughly the same – 50 percent and 46 percent, respectively. But the good news is that urban India is seeing a faster growth in the number of female users (39 percent) compared to male users (26 percent).

In rural India, nearly 90 percent of internet users are male, and three-quarters of them are in the 18-30 age group.

Mobile first

The report puts the number of mobile internet users at 284 million in October – that is over three-quarters of the 375 million total internet users last month. What’s more, a survey of non-users in 35 cities across India revealed that two-thirds of those who plan to access the internet will do so on mobile devices.

Tech startups rolling out a mobile-first or mobile-only strategy for the market in India appear to have got that right.

See: 15 top-funded ecommerce startups in India this year