As per a survey of Indian school children conducted by TCS, majority of school kids in ubran areas are pretty active online.

Some highlights from the survey:

* 63% of urban students spend over an hour online daily
* 93% are aware of social networking
* Orkut and Facebook are most popular online destinations
* 46% use online sources to access news; TV, Newspaper users at 25%
* 62% have a personal computer at home
* 1 in 4 students own lap-tops in metros; 2 of 3 own music players
* IT and engineering remain overwhelming popular career choices
* Media & Entertainment, Travel and Tourism are emerging careers
* USA, UK top list of international destinations for higher studies

The survey  was conducted across 14000 high school kids between the ages of 12-18 in 12 cities across India during 2008-2009. This is by far, one of the largest surveys in this age demographic that I’ve personally seen.

Amongst other things, one additional intesting highlight is the fact that 80% of the kids surveyed said that they have access to mobile phones.

Another interesting highlight: 41% of the kids cite Google as their most preferred source of information — print (26%) and TV(25%) came in 2nd and 3rd.

You can review rest of the survey details here.

I would strongly suggest bookmarking this link — as mentioned before, this is by far the largest and best survey that I have found for this particular age demographic. It could be a vital resource for those of you looking for ideas for your next startup.

Comments

• August 24, 2009, Chitra commented: Yes. It is TRUE. Our Site Have Traffic from All over Tamilnadu even in Small Villages. The Survey is True. We are providing Free Questions for Tamilnadu SSLC and +2 School Students.

As per a story in ET, the ad spend by Indian political parties in the recent elections is pegged at around Rs 800 crores. Mind you, this is just the ad spend in media – doesnt include other costs like campaigning, travelling etc. etc..

Cant help but say WTF !!!

If only a fraction of this wealth could be used for really worthwhile causes……

Comments

• April 25, 2009, A commented: Thats awesome Some of the money from swiss banks is back already...
• April 26, 2009, Preyash commented: Hey .. I think the 800 crores is a fraction of the cost thats actually spent. It maybe more like 2000 crores. But considering the size of the national budget, the voter participation we need, the real change we want to see in India and the need for a strong govt at the center, that cost is well worth it. Without that, we stand to lose possibly 80000 crores over the next 5 years. Indias 2008 budget spending was 74000 crores (Rs 7,400,000,000,000) .. so imagine the impact of 800 crores well spent on getting a good strong PM for this nation. We need to rather focus on getting our friends and family to vote. To vote for a better India. For a better future. Someone who will make sure that India can recover the 2000+ crores that might be spent in elections/campaigns/ads, etc with the economic prosperity the govt can bring to the millions of rural people.
• April 27, 2009, Roopesh commented: I am not sure why spending 800 crores is a bad idea, doesnt it mean that there is now 800 crores in pockets of people and typically such people are the banner makers, the rally organisers, the transport fellows, the rally infrastructure people, advertising etc.. Its great that these 800 crores are in the pockets of the common man, rather than sitting in MPs secret accounts/ safe..
• April 28, 2009, braj commented: This money is back in the market. .. It is good idea. .... farzaap.com
• April 29, 2009, pranav commented: there is now 800 crores in pockets of people and typically such people are the banner makers, the rally organisers, the transport fellows, is it really ? :-)
• May 7, 2009, kelvi commented: In a way, most of this money was hidden in some Swiss Bank. At least, the money flowed back into the Indian economy. There was at least some industry (be it the paper industry for posters, banners etc. or some other industry) that benefited from the campaign.. I support this! Next time it should be 8000Cr. This is the only time when the politicians in some way, during their lifetime, do good to the Indian society.
• December 13, 2011, Blackberry commented: Its great that these 800 crores are in the pockets of the common man, rather than sitting in MPs secret accounts/ safe.. If only a fraction of this wealth could be used for really worthwhile causes……

Akamai recently released their latest State of the Internet quarterly report (last quarter 2008).

Here’re the stats related to state of Internet in India:

% of Attack Traffic originating from India: 1.16%

Number of unique IP addresses: 2,629,923

Unique IP’s per capita: <0.01

Average Internet speed: 772 KBps

% above 5MBPS connections : 0.6%

% above 2 MBPS connections: 3.7%

% below 256 KBPS: 26%

As you can see below, the stats havent changed significantly as compared to the last figures reported in the 2nd quarter 2008.

% of Attack Traffic originating from India: 1.02%

Number of unique IP addresses: 2,108,790

Unique IP’s per capita: 0.00

Average Internet speed: data not available

% above 5MBPS connections : 0.6%

% above 2 MBPS connections: 4.6%

% below 256 KBPS: 26%

The major change as you can notice is in the number of the unique IP addresses – There was an increase of 521,133 unique IP addresses reported in India between 2nd Quarter 2008 and 4th quarter 2008. And that’s a good thing, because unique IP addresses is a direct indication of Internet penetration. In other words, the more the unique IP addresses, the more the people connecting to the Internet from different Internet connections. Of course, these unique IP addresses metric is a bit skewed for markets like India & China, where a significant Internet usage happens in cyber cafes. Even with this increase, India still significantly lags other countries in terms of adoption – for instance, China had about 40 million unique IP’s as compared to India’s measely 2 million.

You can access the entire report here (free registration needed to download)

• India had 2.6 million Internet connections in 3rd Quarter

Comments

• March 31, 2009, Sachin commented: Nice information..but why "% above 2 MBPS connections" are reduced? I don't think that they have been moved to > 5MBPS as it is same at 0.6%.
• March 31, 2009, pranav commented: Sachin, thats a question that popped in my mind as well. I guess people downgraded from 2 mbps to slower connections ? Thats the only explanation that i could think of.
• April 1, 2009, Sachin commented: Hmm..but very strange.
• April 1, 2009, Santhanam commented: Dear Pranav, I feel that a report which talks in terms of % only cannot reveal the real ground realities. Atleast in Cochin(Kerala), i could observe that there is a real price war between the broadband service providers(of course induced by BSNL) & ISPs are actively wooing for more subscribers. More homes which have computers are becoming broadband connected. Education & Entertainment (Music, Movies & Games) are the prime motives. Also most of the Indian ISPs are allocating dynamic IPs. So we should have a formula for working out the real number of connections. I feel that TRAI should come out with similar report(if it has not done already). My opinion is that TRAI's report will be much more reliable compared to Akamai, atleast in India, since all ISPs are reporting to it. With Regards Santhanam P.S.: 1) http://www.financialexpress.com/news/bsnl-launches-broadband-value-added-services/439849/
• April 1, 2009, Tim commented: There is sure a long way to go in take up and access to the internet. It will be one of the key drivers in economic growth that's for sure. Tim
• April 5, 2009, pranav commented: santhanam certain metrics are possible only in % -- for instance Internet adoption etc. Trai reports the # of broadband customers in its monthly reports.
• May 25, 2010, Lacey Cook commented: Broadband internet these days are getting much faster and cheaper too. ;*~
• June 29, 2010, Alfie Davies commented: everyone wants fast broadband internet these days, i got some 5 mbps connection at home..;,
• August 29, 2010, Alexis Martin commented: broadband internet these days are dirt cheap, there are more and more broadband companies offering cheap service too`:.
• October 7, 2010, Zak Fisher commented: the nice thing about broadband internet is that it gets cheaper each year*"-

While reading a story on digital marketing in India, came across a few interesting bits:

• As per a study conducted by Nokia India and TNS India, Indian mobile users accessed Internet for 2.4 day a week as compared to 2.7 days a week via a PC
• 28% accessed Internet as compared to 26% via PC’s
• Internet advertising in India grew by 45%  in 2008 to touch Rs 363 crores (1.7% of the advertising pie)
• Internet advertising in India is projected to grow at 25% in 2009

via Livemint

• India online advertising market worth Rs. 250 crores, India mobile advertising is Rs 40 crores
• Advertising agency WPP grows 22% in India
• When Indian websites have to rely on TV to market themselves

Comments

• March 18, 2009, BG Mahesh commented: Could you share the source which says "28% accessed mobile Internet as compared to 26% via PC’s". I read this Mint article yesterday but I don't seem to find any reference to this study. When you translate the percentage to absolute numbers, it sounds very high - i.e. about 10 million use mobile internet in India? If it is true, it is good news. We have seen growth in the traffic of oneindia.mobi but not to those levels :-(
• March 18, 2009, JM commented: Yes, i didn't find the information in the MINT article either. However, I found this link on the Nokia site... http://advertising.nokia.com/news/press-releases/nokia-study-paints-bright-future-for-mobile-advertising-as-consumers-embrace-the-mobile-internet
• March 18, 2009, BG Mahesh commented: I went back to the print version. It is in the print version of the Mint article and not on the online version. Yes, once 3G does become a reality and "affordable" there is no doubt mobile internet will be big but in today's world I don't think it is big.
• March 18, 2009, pranav commented: i provided the link in the story. Embedding here again: http://www.livemint.com/2009/03/16213420/Ad-traffic-picks-up-tempo-onli.html if you cant access it for some reason, it might be the case that livemint is filtering access by country / ip.
• July 9, 2010, Abigail Clark commented: Mobile advertising would continue to grow as more and more mobile phone users get hooked on texting and mobile browsing.~.~
• July 26, 2010, Amelie Griffiths commented: mobile advertising would be the trend in the next few years because of the growth of mobile users."*~
• September 12, 2010, Logan Robinson commented: mobile advertising would be the next wave of the future:,;
• October 24, 2010, DL-Phenylalanine Side Effects : commented: mobile advertising will be the next popular way of promoting products and services;-,
• December 20, 2010, Amp Accessories commented: there is always a growth on mobile advertising, it would be the trend of the future :"*
• July 31, 2011, Moshe Dottavio commented: Thank you for this short article. It's got totally aided in my knowledge. I'm pretty distinctive Ill arrive back to this amazing site. Thanks once again, friend. xDD
• August 5, 2011, mini personenortung commented: Read more... [...]more[...]...
• September 10, 2011, Bernard commented: Aw, i thought this was quite a nice post. In concept I'd like to put in writing such as this moreover – spending time and real energy to generate a excellent write-up

As per a perception study done by KPMG and TiE, ‘”Entrepreneurial India”, the Indian entrepreneurial community is pretty optimistic about entrepreneurship in India. On a scale of 1 (lowest) – 5 (highest), entrepreneurs have rated India at a 3.31.  At a state level, Andra Pradesh received the highest rating of 4.14.

The study comprised of a survey of about 1000 entrepreneurs to evaluate their perception of the ecosystem across various factors like finance, government issues, infrastructure, manpower issues etc.  Finance, Infrastructure, followed by manpower emerged as the three most important factors for fostering entrepreneurship.

via here

Incidentally, there’s another document out there, but I’m guessing its an earlier version of the same study.

• Indian tech entrepreneurs – I want to hear from you
• IT still remains preferred career choice for Indian engineering graduates
• Indian ecosystem needs that one spark

As per figures released by the Internet Governance Forum, which meets at Hyderabad on Dec 3rd, India has 81 million Internet users. India ranks fourth in the world in terms of Internet users and US, with 220 million Internet users, tops the world.  China, with 210 million users, comes in a close second.

It seems that estimating the number of Internet users in India is pretty much like using a magic 8 ball. Shake the ball and chances are that every other time, you might just get a different number. Yipee !!

via ET

• India had 2.6 million Internet connections in 3rd Quarter
• Broadband numbers – this time from eMarketer
• TRAI quarterly stats for mobile and Internet subscribers in India

Comments

• December 2, 2008, Rizwan commented: Heyyyyy that's really good - looking at the sorry state of out connection. The speeds are pathetic and despite that the Indian market has braved to sit through their downloads and video streams.......I like it....proud to be an Indian - we got the best chalta hay attitude in the world

Akamai released its ‘State of the Internet’ quarterly report, which indicates that India had 2.6 IP addresses in Q3, registering a 23% growth.

Key highlights of the report:

• India ranked No. 20 in terms of number of observed IP addresses with 2.6 million connections. In Q3, the growth in IP addresses was 23%
• In comparison, China had 38 million and Unites States had 109 million unique IPs, while being ranked at No. 2 and No. 1 respectively
• India ranks a low No. 153 in terms of number of IP addresses per capita, with 2.3 unique IPs per thousand people
• In comparison, China had 30 unique IPs per thousand people and United States had 360 unique IPs per thousand people, while being ranked at No. 94 and No. 6 respectively
• The percentage of Internet connections from India with speeds above 256 Kbps was at 74%, indicating gradual shift from dial-up speeds to high speed connectivity
• The percentage of Internet connections from India with speeds above 2 Mbps was at 5%, growing 16% compared to Q2
• In comparison, China had 4.3% connections above 2 Mbps and United States had 64% connections above 2 Mbps
• India ranked 12th in terms of global attack traffic origination in Q3, contributing 1.6% to observed global attack traffic – last quarter India was ranked at 15th

You can read the entire report here.

• State of the Internet in India
• Broadband numbers – this time from eMarketer
• What is ailing the broadband adoption in India ?

Comments

• November 26, 2008, Rizwan commented: Dude club this with http://www.startupdunia.com/2008/11/19/india-planning-to-launch-satellite-for-internet-connectivity/ you get an astounding number of connections that would go up....mainly the rural connections making the per capita connections higher...... also China and US both have satellites already deployed for basic mobile and internet connectivity with uplinks in terrabyte ranges.

eBay India has launched a Census guide for India. As part of the effort, they’ve launched a mashup listing the top Indian cities that drive traffic to eBay India remixed with data for that city. For instance, Mumbai was the top traffic driver to eBay India and the top items sold were Diamonds, handsets, USB MP3 players, stamps etc.

USB Drives emerged as the top selling item on eBay India. IT hubs of AP, Kerala, Maharashtra, TN and Karnataka were the most wired states with the maximum number of towns where Indian ecommerce originates.

via ET

• Somebody buy MouthShut already
• Microsoft ignoring Indian market at its own peril
• No takers for ByIndia.com

Comments

• October 1, 2010, Olivia Smith commented: i sell some stuffs on ebay too and i can earn tons of bucks from it`;`
• October 18, 2010, Shower Cubicle  commented: i love to shop on ebay because it is very convenient and the price are very cheap too",*

I always knew that LinkedIn was popular in India because a lot of my LinkedIn contacts (from India) always seemed hyper active — making new connections, updating profiles etc.

But I was surprised when I found that India actually accounts for the 2nd highest traffic to LinkedIn just behind US.  Take a look for yourself:

When you look at the web searches for LinkedIn, the stats are even more whack. Indians do the largest number of search related to LinkedIn on Google:

Even though Brijj (Naukri owned professional networking site) claims to have 1.2 million profiles with 5000 new profiles being created daily, the traffic fails to even register as compared to the LinkedIn traffic.

So, let me ask you this — if you have been in charge of a hiring decision as part of your professional life — do you review the candidate’s LinkedIn profile ? If so, how important is the candidate’s LinkedIn profile to your hiring decision ?

• Naukri launches professional networking site Brijj.com
• Job Referral site TechTribe looking for a buyer or to shut down
• Info Edge planning other verticals ?

Comments

• July 27, 2011, Jerald Taibi commented: I uncovered your internet page by way of research motors even when seeking out for that connected topic, your internet page demonstrated up up. give a large number of as a consequence of you for that fabulous blog. Amazingg skills! hold on man, you rock!

Here’re some metrics for online gaming sites in India:

Reach: 27.4%

Total Unique Visitors: 8,295,000

Average minutes per visitor: 45.4

Average visits per visitor: 4.3

India ranks lowest in terms of popularity of online gaming websites in the APAC region. Additionally the ‘average visits per visitor’ metric also seems to indicate that number of “repeat visitors” is incredibly low as compared other APAC countries.

via release

• India has 81 million Internet users
• India had 2.6 million Internet connections in 3rd Quarter
• Indian entrepreneurs confidence index

Comments

• October 16, 2008, animesh commented: Hmm.. I thought the Indian Gaming Industry was booming. this report certainly gives you a food for thought:)
• October 20, 2008, pranav commented: It may be booming -- but still is pretty small as compared to other APAC countries..
• November 10, 2008, Rama commented: I think the reason for the lower rates in India is a good chunk of the online users are users from work and gaming from work is not practical. Other Internet areas of course benefit as its not as difficult to browse or use from work.
• December 10, 2010, shubha commented: I am already playing Sattaindia.com i.e Kalyan and Mumbai online. I would prefer other gambling sites india where I can play there. I wish to make more popular among my other female friends. They will have access to such sites. Pl help me. maddy.s61@rediffmail.com

Comscore has released numbers related to the Indian Internet usage for May 2008. As per the report:

• 28 million users in the age group 15 & older accessed Internet from home – work locations
• This indicates a 27% jump in the Internet usage from last year 
• India has one of the fastest growing Internet populations among the countries listed in the comScore world Metrix service
• The 28 million still represents only 3% of the population leaving room for tremendous growth (I’ve talked about this before)

Some additional bits from the report:

• Average Indian visitor is online 25 times a month with each visit averaging 28 minutes
• Users in the 15-24 age group spent 12 hours online and are the heaviest users
• Fastest growing web site categories include Map (64%), sports (60%), movies (55%), finance & news (52%)

The network of Google sites ranked highest in terms of visitors with nearly 20 million visitors.

• Orkut had 9.3 million visitors (up by 39%)
• Blogger had 7.3 million visitors (up 102%)
• YouTube had 6.3 million visitors (up 131 %)

Only 6 of the top 15 sites are indigenous websites.

Read the release here.

• Broadband numbers – this time from eMarketer
• India Social Networking traffic increases by 51%
• How hot is consumer Internet space in India ?

Comments

• July 24, 2008, Abhishek J commented: Comscore' stats shud be taken with a pinch of salt * It doesn't measure cybercafe traffic * It doesn't measure traffic of people below the age of 15 It is a good reflection of office-going and home internet usage only and under reports site stats by as much as 50% in some cases however its utility is as a good comeptitive intelligence tool
• July 28, 2008, pranav commented: Abhishek, None of the metrics services are reliable enough http://www.startupdunia.com/2008/01/02/comparison-of-web-analytics-sites/ http://www.startupdunia.com/2008/01/06/the-web-metrics-voodoo-strikes/ but, yes all of these gotchas do hold for the India report :-)

So says a global study on social media done by Universal McCann.

Results from the study indicate that Internet users in the US and Western Europe are passive participants on social media sites. Meanwhile, users from Asia and South America rank big on creating content on social media sites like blogs, social networks, video sharing etc.

While only 25% of US Internet users have uploaded a video to YouTube, 68% of Brazil’s Internet users have uploaded to video to YouTube.

Several other interesting highlights in the story here.

• Oops…I did it again…..
• India Internet statistics
• Online digital photo printing gets some serious competition

Comments

• April 21, 2008, Raghu commented: Although i have no reason at all to say so, but...(pure gut feeling), i think the figure is awfully exaggerated!
• April 24, 2008, Vivek commented: Hey, thats abs bullshit. The no of Indians as seen with both alexa and comscore is not more than 500,000. How can u even publish such stupid comments in an otherwise wonderful blog
• April 24, 2008, pranav commented: guys, i agree with you about the india statistic -- but the overall, generic observation - about social media creation happening in developing countries -- i might buy it.
• April 25, 2008, Nishi/Chillibreeze commented: I have been thinking about this seemingly impossible figure and here is my explanation. Let us say there are X million Indians online and X/2 million videos (Indian IP) on You Tube. I am wondering whether they meant this- for every 2 Indians online, there is one video on You tube- when they said 50 percent of online Indians have posted a video on You Tube.
• April 27, 2008, Munim commented: No.. I just came digest this piece of info. I have used internet for the past 9 years and I have never even thought of uploading a video on the internet. I don't have any friend who has uploaded a video on the internet.. and I am a web developer.
• May 7, 2008, Dr K Chaudhry commented: in.youtube.com youtube.in youtube.co.in webpage appeared early morning today. I was delited to find only indian videos listed as Feature Videos. Swati Kothari, Gautam, Shailesh, Sakeena - all together organised a grand show at India Habitat Center. Media queries were also answered comprehensively by Shailesh-Sakeena duo. What impressed me is the young age. All those on huge Google/YouTube posts can be called young guys and gals with no offence. Manager - International : I thought she is a college student. Congratulations to YouTube managent. I was acknowledged as first person to send felicitation SMS.

TRAI released quarterly report for the quarter ending December 2007.

Some highlights:

• Wireless market grows 11.74% and total wireless subscriber base stands 233.62 million
• Internet subscriber base reaches 10.36 million
• Broadband subscriber base reaches  3.13 million users. Rate of growth in this quarter is 17.23%
• There are 57.83 million wireless Internet subscribers (capable of accessing Internet through mobile handset (GSM/ CDMA))
• 54% of ISPs failed to meet the benchmark of service provisioning/activation within 2 weeks

• Wireless and broadband subscriber numbers at end of August 2007
• Sify announces F1Q07 results
• India Internet statistics

Comments

• July 17, 2008, devki nandan commented: i thankful to u for providing information but ur information is too old if possible then provide latest information

Nilesh has compiled an amazing set of graphs from the latest payment statistics released by Indian Railways IRCTC website for the month of March 2008.

For the uninitiated, this data is pretty interesting because IRCTC happens to be India’s biggest e-commerce website. This data can be used to extrapolate and get an insight into the e-commerce statistics in India.

• Credit cards are the most prevalent form of payment on IRCTC website with 43% of all payment occurring via credit cards. Cash cards came in at a surprising, strong 28%

• ICICI payment gateway (PG) accounted for 54%, HDFC PG accounted for 21% and Citibank PG accounted for 20% of all credit card transactions

• Of the cash cards, ITZ Cash card accounted for 51% while DONE card accounted for 47% while TRANS I card accounted for 2% of the transactions

• Transactions via Citibank PG had a pretty high rate of failure

There are a few additional charts over at Nilesh’s blog. Hop on over there to review the rest.

Comments

• April 4, 2008, Hemant commented: Cash Card transactions are 28%, because most of the Travel Agents use cash card, and a lot of people who don't have internet access, book tickets through agents.
• April 5, 2008, rk commented: Surprised with the high usage of cash cards. I had never used one till now. Also new to me that it is the largest e-commerce portal RK http://theindiastockmarket.blogspot.com/
• April 14, 2008, pranav commented: @hemant - that definitely maybe a possibility
• April 15, 2008, Startups in Twitter commented: Indian Startups in News... Have included the following blogs on startups in news that follow the Indian startup scene - Nasscom, Contentsutra, Webyantra, Watblog, Desi Startups, Pluggd, Venturewoods, Convergence, Indian Broadband, Startup Dunia, Trak, iLeher, Aloo Techie, Thinki...

Erick@Techcrunch had an interesting post – The Internet from a global perspective. While US had the maximum number of Internet users (161.6 million), China was catching up fast (96 million).

With a user base of 25.2 million users, India came in at the 8th position. We (me included) keep whining about how Internet penetration in India is still negligible, but if you look at it from a global perspective, even with the pitiful penetration, we managed to come in at number 8. If the penetration increases by only 10% this year (wishful thinking), we’ll very easily jump two places in this list.

If you see the above penetration in terms of percentage of population, the table looks like below:

US – 53 %

china – 7.2 %

japan – 42.3%

germany – 40%

uk – 53.3%

france – 43.2%

south korea – 53%

India – 2.23%

And you can see exactly why China and India offer such a huge room for growth. The world’s most populous nations and the Internet penetration is still in single digits. Thanks to the forward looking communist regime, China is making tremendous progress in the Internet front (disregarding the online censorship, ‘great firewall’ etc.). Sadly, such aggressive efforts are still missing in India. The Indian Government’s initiative last year – “2007 – year of the broadband” was a big disappointment. Subscriber base grew at a much slower rate than projected. We need to act & act fast.

Another interesting slide from the TC post was how home grown players in several countries are more popular than the Internet biggies.

Of course, the common thread is that all of the above are non-English speaking countries.

For the Indian market I’d say that the top 3 would be Yahoo India, Rediff and Google (all Google network sites included). In fact, a similar trend has also been observed in the Indian Web 2.0 market – global Web 2.0 companies have captured more Indian users than home grown players.I guess majority of the current, online Indian population is English speaking and that explains why they’ve latched on to the Western Internet portals.
As more non English speaking Indian users come online, do you think it will tip the usage in favor of home grown sites like Guruji and OneIndia ?

• Comscore releases India Internet usage numbers
• Broadband numbers – this time from eMarketer
• Size of India Web 2.0 market is 1.5 million users

Comments

• March 23, 2008, Cyril Gupta commented: Excellent review. I think there is plenty of growth for content in local languages, but rediff may not be the winner. I expect a sort of micro-localization to occur, in which the winners will be local companies run by people who have a deeper understanding of the local culture and expectations. It will be interesting to see what really happens. :)
• March 23, 2008, Jagannath commented: India has sheer numbers :D but if quality and speed of connections were even given small weightage India would have completely vanished from any stats... so pathetic are our broadband connections :(
• March 27, 2008, Jay commented: Anyway, I don't often see a lot of good coming out of the internet usage that is being done. People can use something like orkut for good, but all they do is put up their rock star-like photos and have found another forum for gossiping.
• March 28, 2008, dDude commented: excellent review - i feel india is at an advantage right now cause it has very less broadband users compared to other big nations. this proves there is a huge potential to grow and even with this less numbers we are rocking the internet space. imagine what it would be when broadband and wireless access is easily available in india?
• March 31, 2008, pranav commented: @jagannath - I agree..this report doesnt include the speed / quality of the connections. If so, Japan and S Korea would be topping the charts.. and India might not have appeared in the list at all. @cyril - you present an interesting perspective -- my question is -- will the Internet penetration ever drill down to those levels ? @dDude - yes..there is immense room for growth.

So says IDC India.

As per an IDC release ,

Excluding the established, large global players like Orkut, YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia et al, IDC estimates that Web 2.0 start-ups have a combined user base in India of around 15 lakh users, after eliminating overlaps.

22 million Internet users in India.

About 9 million broadband subscribers in India.

Less than 10% of Indian Internet users make up the target audience for India Web 2.0 startups.

Is this the reason why VC’s are shying from early stage funding for Web 2.0 startups ?

What do you think ?

• India Internet statistics
• Broadband numbers – this time from eMarketer
• TRAI quarterly stats for mobile and Internet subscribers in India

Comments

• March 3, 2008, Vivek Puri commented: IDC is obviously wrong. I dont want to digg to much into, but couple of links: http://www.internetworldstats.com/asia.htm http://www.iamai.in/PRelease_detail.aspx?nid=1562&NMonth=12&NYear=2007 If you search around a bit you will come to know that Orkut has 20-30% users from India. According to some 2006 stats, Orkut had 60 millions users. That makes atleast 10 million users from India in the last year itself. Keep in mind i am not talking about people of Indian origin based out of US, UK, India,..... It is the users actually located in India. Want more juice? Here is another link: http://www.admob.com/marketing/pdf/mobile_metrics_jan_08.pdf Look up the number of mobile ads originating from India in PDF....... Those numbers are definitely not fake.
• March 3, 2008, pranav commented: Vivek, I guess you missed the part in the IDC release where it says: Excluding the established, large global players like Orkut... 1.5 mill is the user base for Web 2.0 sites excluding orkut, youtube, flickr etc.
• March 4, 2008, Vivek Puri commented: Yeah i did miss that point. But again that is a moot point to discuss. It is like trying to count web users in US who dont use Google,Yahoo, Facebook, WordPress, and the rest of the top 20 web properties. How many users are left out? Maybe 0. Ah, then we should not have any investment at all in that case.
• March 5, 2008, Shabbir Husain commented: I share the same thinking as Vivek. There is always an overlap between users using the top 10/20 websites and the ones using the others budding web 2.0 websites. In fact it is the former set of users who are more likely to use the new Web 2.0 services. There can not be an exclude statement here. There definitely is an overlap and that overlapping area and its growth potential is what attracts the money and talent. Cheers!
• March 5, 2008, pranav commented: @vivek @ shabbir, the release talks of excluding the international web 2.0 sites, not the top 10-20 web properties. i use google, yahoo. but i dont use facebook or youtube (if you discount a random,chance visit, that is). if i were in pune, i might end up using burrp and bookeazy. you see what i mean ? @shabbir - i see your line of questioning and its definitely very valid.

Indian computer sales jumped by 20% last year as per a survey by market research firm IDC India. PC sales rose from 5.4 million units in 2006 to 6.5 million units in 2007.

Laptop sales surged to 1.8 million from 980,000 units.

HP led with 21% of market share, HCL came in second with 13% while Lenovo filled up the 3rd spot with 10% of the market share. Consumer PC sales grew by 23%, overtaking commercial PC sales, which grew at 19%.

The Rs. 14000 laptop from HCL Infosystems launched in January 2008 should give an additional boost to the number of shipped units this year.

via release and here (pic courtesy: AFP)

An additional interesting tidbit from the release: India is the fastest growing market for SAP, which doubled its customer base to 3000 in 2007.

• PC sales rise 26%, cross 6.3 million units
• Broadband numbers – this time from eMarketer
• India Online – from a Global perspective

I recently posted about BigAdda numbers – how many users they have etc.

Not an entire week passes by and BigAdda have released their ‘official’ numbers.

1.24 million users and 15,000 addas.

12000 – 15000 new users added every day

My latest number crunching reveals the following:

As of 11:20 AM (US EST or about 9:50 PM IST):

BigAdda seems to have 1020697 users and 12973 addas.

About 56337 new users signed up during the last 6-7 days. Comes out to around ~8k users signing up every day.

Several folks emailed me on what methodology I used — all I’ll say at this time is that the magic lies in the url. Couple it with some tech knowhow, and you should be able to figure it out.

• BigAdda – Hype or Happening ?
• BigAdda and Rediff iShare statistics
• Broadband numbers – this time from eMarketer

Comments

• January 9, 2008, VInay commented: Are u sure? i mean 1 mn is still a fabulous number to acheive in such a short span, assuming that your so called tech knowhow did givbe u the rite result!! If its true, for which i have my doubts, then it actually is a good start. Atleast the best amongst all the idotic start ups on social networking initiatives happening in the country for the past couple of years. It remains to be seen hoe BigAdda will tackle the powerhouses google and facebook...
• January 9, 2008, kavita commented: even if its 1020697 users and not 1.24 million - its still a BIG achievement considering they have launched just 5 months back. am looking forward to see where bigadda is headed.
• January 9, 2008, Sudhanshu commented: The number is 1029512 now :)
• January 9, 2008, Sudhanshu commented: So it went up by 8815 in about 20 hours. I also just found out that they use jquery. What do you think is the most popular js framework? I would have thought it was prototype, but well..
• January 10, 2008, pranav commented: prototype is history when it comes to js framework..it is bulky and bloated. i swear by jquery - its sleek, small and well designed.
• January 10, 2008, pranav commented: @vinay @ kavita, Yes..I'm not undermining the fact at all -- that they have about 1 mill users in a short time - it is indeed a good achievement. but on 2nd thoughts, heck, if I had crores to spend on billboards and tv ads, I might have been able to do it as well - who knows?
• January 11, 2008, VInay commented: hehe...well said pranav. I totally agree with you, the muscle power is infact too much, and thats what is bringing in the early movers. i hope they have the product to keep these guys hooked on to the site, and encourage them to bringi n the 2nd n 3rd degree users. guess what, i went to some of their Addas, which resembles a community. I was surprised to see huge numbers in certain Addas. Activity also seems to be prominent.
• January 11, 2008, gautam commented: hi - would be really useful if you let us in on how you calculated these numbers!

In its latest research report, Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) estimates that the e-commerce market in India will reach Rs 9210 crores by end of 2007 – 2008.  The following segments were included as part of determining the e-commerce market:

* Online travel portals and aggregators

* Online retailers and auctions

* Classifieds – comprising of jobs, matrimony, real estate, autos

* Paid content subscription

* Digital downloads – for mobiles and PC’s

Online travel was the leader, with Rs 7000 crores market size. Followed by retailers (Rs 1105 crores), classifieds (Rs. 820 crores), content subscription (Rs 30 crores) and digital downloads (Rs 255 crores).

Major boosters for e-commerce in decreasing order of priority:

1) Saves times and effort

2) convenience

3) Access to wide variety

4) Good deals

5) Detailed product info / research

6) Easy comparison between products

Leading barriers to e-commerce are:

1) unreliable product quality

2) No bargaining (bole to ekdum Indian mentality – paisa vasool honeka)

3) Online security apprehension

4) Not a tangible experience

5) Not enough discounts (wow — I didnt see this coming)

6) Wait time to delivery

Read the entire report here (PDF doc). I’ll dissect the report more closely later this week.

• Content sab ka baap hai
• Stronger Rupee and the Indian IT – BPO industry
• India Internet statistics

Comments

• February 27, 2008, Balaji commented: dear pranav, could you put up the pdf file in ur site. I clicked that link but there is no file.

World Bank has recently published a report on India – “Unleashing India’s Innovation: Toward Sustainable and Inclusive Growth”.

Indian economy is growing at a stupendous pace. But what exactly is needed to sustain this rate of economic growth ? What does India need to do to become more competitive ? How to spur and motivate innovation and research in India ? There are just a few questions addressed in the report.

Below are some of the interesting statistics included in the report:

* Aggregate domestic R&D spending in India has never exceeded 1 percent of GDP, and 75–80 percent of this comes from the public sector

* Of the top 50 applicants for patents in India between 1995 and 2005, 44 were foreign firms. Only six were Indian; three of these were public institutions and one, a public corporation. Just two were private Indian firms, both in the pharmaceutical
industry. See my earlier post on patent statistics in India here

* India produces fewer than 7,000 PhDs a year in the faculties of science, engineering, and technology.India’s higher education system needs to produce more scientists, engineers, and other Masters and PhD graduates with skills matched to the needs of the innovation economy

* Some 2 percent of India’s population lives abroad. Their aggregate incomes are roughly equal to two-thirds of India’s GDP

* Teledensity in India in urban areas is 40 percent, compared with 2 percent in rural areas

* Less than 3 percent of the Indian workforce is in the modern private sector, while roughly 90 percent is in the informal sector.
This resonates with Alan Greenspan’s views on India as part of this latest book – “Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World”

And finally, the report also addresses the topic of early stage funding in India, by dedicating a chapter – “Enhancing Innovation Finance” to the topic.

To deepen early-stage venture capital, India should consider both supply- and demand-side reforms. On the demand side, besides increasing ESTD, more efforts need to be undertaken to increase techno-entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship
training should be incorporated more systematically into engineering training. Greater incentives should be provided to young scientists, engineers, MBAs, and 0ther professionals to launch technology-based companies. On the supply side, despite a significant number of major venture capital funds being created in India in the past 12–18 months, biases remain toward larger funds, the IT sector, and more proven business models. New efforts in seed and angel funding trying to fill the gap are insufficient. Taking into account the amount of funding available at the post-early-stage phase, the total funding available at the seed and early stage, especially under $2 million, is a serious bottleneck.

• NYT on slow pace of innovation in India
• Developing the innovation ecosystem in India
• Indian Government to launch seed fund ?