Number of Indian Internet Users to Rise -eMarketer
By CXOtoday Staff
Mumbai, Nov 27, 2007

eMarkerter, a US based online research company released its detailed study report about Indian Internet Users, their likes and behaviours, state of e-commerce in addition with the Internet's popularity and its future in India. The study report was released in September 2007.

Rise of Internet users in India and broadband connections

The Indian government has set a goal to grow the broadband users base to 20 million by 2010. In a bid to achieve the ambitious goal, the Indian government declared 2007 as the 'Year of Broadband'.

However, eMarketer's figures showed there were 2.3 million broadband users in 2006 that can increase up to 10.5 million in 2011. Though this figures are just half compared to Indian government's target.

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) says that the country's broadband population grew from 2.15 million subscribers to 2.47 million in the first half of 2007.

Though there's not much difference between India and China in terms of population, the land of dragon claims to occupy one half of broadband market. While on the other hand India holds mere 2% of broadband highway. (Source: Point Topic)

State of e-commerce in India and its future

According to eMarkerter, there existed 25.5 millions active users (people using the Internet at least once a month) in India for the year 2006. Though it appears a huge number, actually it constitutes 2.3% of the Indian s total population. The users number is expected to shoot up from 33.2 million in 2007 (2.9% of the total population) to 71.6 million by 2011.

While tracking the state of e-commerce in India, eMarketer states that business-to-consumer (B2C) sales was worth of USD 1.2 billion in 2006, representing just 2.3% of the Asia-Pacific market.

This is half of B2C sales in China during the same year. However eMarketer forecasts that B2C sales in India will reach a total of USD 6.4 billion by 2010, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 50.7% from 2006 to 2010.

The study revealed that average on-line user in India spends USD 34 compared to China's on-line user spent of USD 20. The average spending of Indian user is significantly more than the Chinese.

eMarketer expects Indian online spending to get triple on an average of USD 96 per Internet user by 2010. The report also states that e-commerce based transaction has been widely adopted by tours and travel industry in India. Euromonitor, has certainly backed the state of e-commerce in the country and declared India as Asia-Pacifici's fastest growing online travel market.