StartupDunia » Stats and Numbers

Comscore releases India Internet usage numbers

pranav — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:55:27 +0000

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 yearÂ
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.

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 :-)

TRAI quarterly stats for mobile and Internet subscribers in India

pranav — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 21:33:06 +0000

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 reachesÂ 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

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

Payment statistics from IRCTC for March 2008

pranav — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 01:16:39 +0000

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...

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India Online - from a Global perspective

pranav — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:35:28 +0000

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 ?

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.

Size of India Web 2.0 market is 1.5 million users

pranav — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:24:26 +0000

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 ?

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 soar by 20%

pranav — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 17:00:11 +0000

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.

BigAdda releases numbers

pranav — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 16:35:39 +0000

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.

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!

IAMAI pegs Indian e-commerce market at Rs 9000 crores by 2007-2008

pranav — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 03:12:35 +0000

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.Â 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.

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.

Innovation and R&D in India

pranav — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 23:33:53 +0000

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 75â€“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.Indiaâ€™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 Indiaâ€™s population lives abroad. Their aggregate incomes are roughly equal to two-thirds of Indiaâ€™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 12â€“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.

Wireless and broadband subscriber numbers at end of August 2007

pranav — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 02:43:16 +0000

TRAI has released the latest numbers for the wireless and broadband subscriber base, ending August 2007.

As per the release, the wireless subscriber base in India has reached 201.29 million users with 8.31 million users added in August.

Broadband connections (>= 256 Kbps) have reached 2.56 million. There was an addition of 90,000 users in August 2007.

Detailed report here (PDF file).

Broadband numbers - this time from eMarketer

pranav — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 22:05:53 +0000

There have been numerous reports and projections of the number of Internet and broadband subscribers in India - the IAMAI report, JuxtConsult report, TRAI numbers (PDF doc), Comscore numbers. Now, eMarketer offers its own report on the number of broadband subscribers in India.

Key points of the report:

* eMarketer projects 3.2 million broadband connections in India by end of 2007, with a penetration rate of 1.6%

* Instead of the Indian Govt. projections of 20 million broadband users by 2010, eMarketer projects that India will have only 10.5 million broadband connections by 2011

* While Comscore Networks puts the number of Internet users at 22.8 million (discounting access from cyber cafes), eMarketer pegs the Internet user base at 33.2 million at January 2007 (eMarketer definition of Internet user as someone who has accessed Internet at least once in the last 30 days)

* With 2.3% of Indians going online, India has the lowest penetration rate in the Asia Pacific region

* With the Internet user base growing at 33% (one of the highest in the world), India holds the maximum promise

Again, the entire story here.

Update: It looks like the government is taking notice of the poor broadband penetration. Aggressive, corrective actions need to be taken if the broadband projections for next year are to be met. In line with that, TRAI has invited comments (PDF doc) from interested stakeholders on the growth of broadband in India.

What is ailing the broadband adoption in India ?

pranav — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 01:10:15 +0000

First of all, apologies for the slow posting lately. Things have been insanely hectic the last 1-2 weeks thanks to all the traveling. But by this week, things should stabilize a bit and posting will hopefully get to normal.

While still on the road, I had to make time for this post - more so, I felt compelled to write this post.

As part of the latest issue, BusinessWorld has a great cover story on the state of broadband adoption in India. Besides stating the obvious - that broadband penetration in India is miserable - the story also tries to uncover the reasons for the poor adoption. That is one of the things I have always found missing from most of the other broadband related ’studies’.

Here’re some of the interesting pieces from the BW story:

India has 2.52 million high-speed connections, compared to 60 million and 55 million for the US and China, respectively. At least 50 per cent connections in India are with corporates; consumer broadband is barely 1.3 million. But there is a sleight of hand even in these dismal numbers. India follows an archaic definition of broadband, using the term to describe any Internet connection that moves data at more than 256 kbps (kilobits per second). This is not enough to download movies, use Internet telephones, etc. To the rest of the world, a broadband connection must be at least 2 mbps (megabits per second). By that definition, India has only about 400,000 high-speed lines.

Only 400,000 high speed residential connections !!

Amongst other reasons, the story puts the blame on the service providers - BSNL, VSNL, Airtel, Reliance:

Ironically, Indiaâ€™s optic fibre capacity â€” the pipes that deliver broadband â€” far exceeds current usage. At least 40 per cent of the 700,000-km optic fibre laid has not been operationalised by telecom companies, according to Trai.

While Reliance has laid the most â€” 100,000 km â€” optic fibre, the largest mobile company Bharti Airtel has just 40,000 km. Others have less than 10,000 km each. They continue to drag their feet in reaching the optic fibre to the customer and their offerings remain limited to a handful of geographical pockets in and around the top dozen cities. Instead, their investments and management are largely focused on the highly profitable mobile business.

The reason, as Bharti Airtelâ€™s President Atul Bindal says, is that â€œbroadband equipment costs are much higher than mobile equipmentâ€. Every optic fibre line to the consumer costs telcos at least $750 (Rs 30,000) while mobile phone networks can be set up for as little as $90 (Rs 3,600) a line. â€œBroadband is a lot more challenging,â€ says Prakash Bajpai, CEO of broadband business at Reliance Communications. â€œHere you need to lay fibre, get permissions from municipal authorities, housing societies, etc. In mobile there are no such issues.â€

High cost for broadband is also a deterrent for higher adoption:

Whatâ€™s more, broadband providers such as Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Reliance charge Rs 3,300 per month for a 2-mbps connection â€” itself a rare commodity. That is nearly five times what a similar line costs in Japan and South Korea, and more than three times what it costs in the US.Little wonder, then, that in the first six months of this year, India has barely added half a million subscribers (256 kbps). In comparison, China is adding 1.5 million new subscribers, most of them using 1-2 mbps lines, every month.

I really enjoyed reading the story — instead of hyping the numbers like some of the other studies / reports, it paints a more realistic picture.Â All hope is not lost though - one look at the figure (1) below and you’ll notice that though India has miserable numbers when it comes to broadband penetration, it has the highest rate of growth (93.39% for Q1 2007) for broadband connections in the world.Â Something to cheer about ?

Give it a read here and let me know what you think.

Comments

August 27, 2007, Ashish Jain commented: Thats really an eyeopener. I didn't read that issue of BW, but the way you have summarized everything is neat.
August 28, 2007, rAm commented: I am not surprised by this. I also don't see any improvement in the situation. I stay in bangalore so called silicon valley of India and struggling to get a good broadband(read atleast 128kbps and full time on) connection for over two months. Imagine the state in other cities.!! None of the companies are interested to serve the customer, they somehow treat the broadband as a step child (I get a hang of the reason from your post). But what I don't understand is why should only the telcos provide broadband. Pranav any inputs here?? What needs to be done is allow independent ISP's to provide the connection. Also regulation needs to be brought on to make broadband penetration cheaper and easier (pus wimax based stuff, make the cabling stuff centralised, etc).
October 24, 2007, Rahul commented: checkout the Reliance wimax connection. It is pretty faster now...More details availble here. www.reliance-wimax.blogspot.com

PC sales rise 26%, cross 6.3 million units

pranav — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 04:01:44 +0000

The PC sales in the country crossed 6.3 million units in 2006-2007, a growth of 26% over the previous year. The notebook / laptop segment grew by 97% with over 8.5 lakh units sold and the desktop segment grew by 19% with over 54.9 lakh units sold in 2006 -2007. Businesses accounted for 74% of the total PC sales, registering a growth of 18% YoY. E-governance activities accounted for a 126% increase in government consumption.

Of all the PC’s sold, multinational brands accounted for 39% of the total desktop market while Indian brands accounted for 23% of the pie.

North region accounted for 31% of all desktop sales, growing at a rate of 59%.

West region accounted for 27% of all desktop sales, growing at a rate of 5%.

East region accounted for 18% of all desktop sales, growing at a rate of 53%.

South region accounted for 24% of all desktop sales, declining at a rate of 12%.

via HinduÂ

Sify announces F1Q07 results

pranav — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 22:57:43 +0000

Sify announced the financial earnings for the first quarter (Quarter ending 6/30/07) today.

Highlights of the earnings call:

Net loss for the quarter was $1.27 million compared to a net profit of $1.54 million for the same quarter last year
Revenues for the quarter rose by 6.6% to $34.6 million compared to same quarter last year

The company lost $1.28 million due to provision of doubtful debts. This ate into the revenues last quarter as well. And as per Pijush Das, CFO, Sify, will eat into the next couple of quarters as well. This Stronger rupee led to a further loss of $0.4 million.

Consumer services contributes 32.6%, enterprise services contributes 60.5% while portals contribute 3.1% of total Sify revenues.

Other announcements included appointment of Arvind Mathur as Chief Architect - Global services and the introduction of new iWay business models.

One of the things I found very interesting:

In April this year, Sify announced that they had outsourced Internet ad sales to Big Bang Media. In today’s earnings call, Suri Venkat, COO, Sify said this:

Our revenues for portals were impacted during the last quarter with regard to online advertising as the outsourcing strategy that we have taken up did not pay dividends as expected. Consequently Sify has now reset its own team to drive ad revenues, and this is already gaining traction.

So, it looks like Sify has given Big Bang Media the boot and are now doing ad sales in house.

via release and SeekingAlpha

How hot is consumer Internet space in India ?

pranav — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 07:12:59 +0000

Majority of the VC firms from Silicon Valley now have an India focused fund and several Indian companies as part of their portfolio.

Yes, India’s market is blazing hot right now and ‘Go East’ is the new mantra.
There’s no denying that India is hot - but how hot exactly is the consumer Internet space in India ?

The Comscore India report put the Indian Internet penetration rate at 3% with the total user base at 22 million.

That pegs the total Indian population at 733.33 million.

As per the latest Indian census report, the urban population accounts for 27.8% of the total Indian population.

Assuming India’s population is 733.33 million, this puts the urban population at ~203 million (27.8%).

Now, as per the latest TRAI figures (PDF file), broadband subscriber stands at ~2 million.

Getting real that broadband is still a distant dream in rural areas in India, the 2 million can be safely assumed to be contributed from urban areas.

So, 2 million of ~203 million urbanites have broadband - roughly 1%. Thus, broadband penetration in India can be assumed at about 1% (if you calculate it for the actual Indian population of ~ 1 Billion, the penetration rate will dip way further down).

Do these figures give enough incentives for VC’s to invest in the Indian consumer Internet space ?

Let us briefly look at the major VC investments in Indian consumer Internet companies:

Sequoia India - Guruji, Travelguru, MingleBox, ApnaLoan, Shaadi

Helion - Komli, MakeMyTrip

Matrix Partners - seventymm

Norwest Venture Partners - Yatra, Sulekha

Canaan Partners - bharatmatrimony

NEA IndoUS Venture Fund - Via / Flight Raja

KPCB - cleartrip, naukri

If you look closely, you’ll notice that majority of these investments are either into travel portals or existing, prominent portals (shaadi, sulekha, naukri etc.).

Very few are actually “startups” in the true sense.

Well, okay - the penetration rate is miserable. But look at the growth rate - 33%, fastest in the world as per Comscore. Yes, true..the growth rate is stupendous. But the growth rate does not actually depict broadband / “always-on” usage - the piece that is key to the proliferation of consumer Internet space.

Is that in any way, affecting the VC investment decisions in the Indian consumer Internet segment ? Should we be betting on the double digit growth rate or be wary of the poor penetration rate ?

Note: I’ve tried to be as accurate as possible. in case you notice any errors, kindly give me some leeway - its 3 in the morning as i write this

Comments

July 15, 2007, satpal commented: Nice analysis Pranav.You could have made this look more interesting by adding some economic aspect like size of online advertising (life blood of present day internet ventures) and revenue and cash flow of existing ventures (reddif,indiatimes,info edge). I would like to add that from consumer point of you indian internet market is very cold.I hardly see any entreprenuer comming with local idea with global standard execution.Too many me-toos donot make it a exiting place. ANothey way to look at this is that indian internet market is vigin. Tt is more open then for experimentaion then any other market.No visible brands.No great success stories. Problem with indian internet market is its user base.User base have not reached to a critical mass can lift (and hence reward) a (original) idea overnight.To be successful in indina it isnecessary to have both online and offline presence for whcih you need lots of capital.This create a chicken and egg like situation.You will not have traction becoz u lack offline presence and u would not like to have offline presence till u get proof of concept online and get a VC to fund your expension. IMHO we dnot need VCs we need ideas and people who can execute those ideas to the prefection.
July 15, 2007, pranav commented: Satpal, very true - the travel portals that have been so successful - these have combined the offline - online model well. To reach the 'critical mass', you need to go offline as well :-)
July 15, 2007, pranav commented: Let me see if I can come up with an interesting way to plot the dimensions of advertising and revenues against the figures from this post...
July 20, 2007, Indian govt plans action to meet projections of 20 million broadband connections commented: [...] Indian govt plans action to meet projections of 20 million broadband connections Tag: India broadbandIndia had a target of 3 million, 9 million and 20 million broadband Internet users by 2005, 2007 and 2010 respectively. In contrast, current broadband figures stand at 2.5 million users.Â The gap is expected to widen to 10 million by 2010. So, instead of the projected 20 million broadband users, India will have only 10 million users. As noted in an earlier post, penetration currently is less than 1%. [...]
March 28, 2008, dhingana commented: very interesting read....i have a strong feeling that in 2008 more investments are going to be in the social networking domain...

Online movie ticket bookings increasing in India

pranav — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 06:14:42 +0000

Now that online travel booking has become fairly common in India, the next ‘in’ thing is online movie ticket bookings. Some interesting statistics related to online movie ticket booking in India:

Online movie ticket bookings have doubled in the first 6 months of 2007 from 4-5% to 10% of total revenue for theater chains
PVR cinemas made Rs 25 crores from online bookings (almost 11% of total ticket sales)
72% of the Internet audience books tickets in advance
41% prefer multiplexes
23% of Indian Internet users have purchased tickets online at least once
27% of the target audience is on the fence leaning towards being converted to online buyers

See my reviews of KyaZoonga and BookEazy

via BS

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ComScore releases Internet statistics for India

pranav — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 04:32:38 +0000

First there was the IAMAI report, which pegged the number of active Internet users in India at 25 million.

As per JuxtConsult’s ‘India Online 2007′, there are 25 million active Internet users in India.

TRAI figures put the Indian Internet subscriber base at 8.582 million

{all the above captured as part of this post earlier }

Now, ComScore has released their statistics related to Indian Internet users and the top visited websites in India. AgencyFaqs has an exclusive report on the details.

Following are some of the highlights of the report:

Indian Internet population stands at 22 million in April 2007, a 10 percent jump from 20 million in November 2006
Yahoo was the most visited website network with 14 million unique visitors (growth of 9% between Nov 06 to April 07)
Google came in second with 13.9 million unique visitors with a 16% growth between Nov 06 to April 07
Microsoft came in at number 3 with 10.3 million visitors

Time Warner Network had 4 million unique visitors and also grew the fastest (74%) over the six months
Average time spent by a user on Google was 4.5 hours as compared to Yahoo’s 4.2 hours and Microsoft’s 1.6 hours
Corporate websites are the most visited category of websites in India (73 %). Services (message boards, chat, forums, email) came in second with 72 % and portals came in at 70%. 52 % of online Indian audiences visit entertainment websites and the same number also visit social networking websites

You can read the entire story here and download the report here.

If you compare the list of top visited Indian websites from ComScore and Alexa, the top 4-5 results are actually not very different.

Comscore has Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Rediff and IndiaTimes as the top five visited websites by Indians.

Alexa has Yahoo, Orkut (Google), Google India (Google), Google, Rediff, Microsoft, YouTube (Google), Naukri, Windows Live (Microsoft), Blogger (Google), Rapidshare, Wikipedia, Tom and then IndiaTimes. Clubbing together the sites owned by the parent company, the Alexa list can be summarized as: Yahoo, Google, Rediff, Microsoft, Naukri, Rapidshare, Wikipedia, Tom and IndiaTimes.

Regarding the Comscore list related to the most visited category of websites, I’m still unsure of how they calculate the reach. My confusion stems from the fact that several of the so-called ‘categories’ overlap. For instance, portals is a separate category. But, most of the portals do offer entertainment and email services. So, if a visitor lands up on Yahoo India movies, does that account for a hit on the portal category or the entertainment category ? Moreover, there is no category related to e-commerce. After all eBay is the 7th most visited network of sites as per their report. Or does e-commerce fall under the ‘retail’ category ?

Comments

March 5, 2008, Deeps commented: This is a very good and useful piece of information. Good work, Pranav. Keep it up.

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India is the worlds fastest growing market in Entertainment and Media space

pranav — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 01:18:59 +0000

As per a study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PwC), India is set to become the worlds fastest growing market for entertainment and media.Â The Indian E&M space is expected to reach RS 100,000 crores by 2011. Asia-Pacific is the fastest growing region, with India and China leading the region at a CAGR of 18.5% and 16.8% respectively over the next five years.

Internet advertising is poised to emerge as the fastest growing segment over the next five years.

US will be the largest but slowest growing market at 5.3% CAGR by 2011.

via BS

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E commerce sales projected to reach Rs. 5500 crores in 2007 - 2008

pranav — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 17:38:23 +0000

As per Assocham, e-commerce is likely to grow by 150% to Rs 5500 crores this fiscal year. The total e-commerce sales for last year were Rs 2200 crores. Delhi and Mumbai contributed 20% and 24% respectively of the total e shopper population in 2006-2007. For 2007-2008 their contribution is expected to reach 30% and 40% respectively.

In 2006-2007, Delhi and Mumbai contributed 20% and 24% of the e shopper population
In 2007-2008, Delhi and Mumbai are estimated to contribute 30% and 40% of the e shopper population
Chennai and Bangalore contributed 7% and 6% of the e shopper populations in 2006-2007
In 2007 -2008, Chennai and Bangalore will likely contribute 12% and 9% of the online shopping population
28% of shoppers are in the 18-25 age group, 48% in 26-35, 15% in the 36-45 age group and 9% in 45-60 age group
88% of online shoppers in India were male, with 86% having at least a bachleor’s degree
Electronic gadgets, apparel, railways, air and movie tickets were most shopped items last year
Products likely to gain popularity this year include jewellery, books, apparel, gift products, music, movies, hotel bookings

via ET

Comments

June 20, 2007, shubham commented: Definitely online shopping is going to increase in India like anything. Airlines and now railways have started this trend and now everyone is following suit. No lines, no hassles :)
November 6, 2007, Joshan commented: Online Shopping will boom in no time! Thats the reason we at www.storrz.com have introduced grocery shopping online along with other consumer products! One of the ways we have gained customer trust is by providing a swipe at home & Sodex-Ho coupon payment options! Our customer service is something we take pride of which we believe betters many other online shopping portals in India!
June 2, 2008, Bulu Pattanaik commented: Could someone let me know a link where I can get the statistics of Exact Internet users of India, as well as statistics of E-commerce users...

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India Internet statistics

pranav — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 04:11:07 +0000

IAMAI claims there are 37 million ‘ever user’ Internet users and 25 million ‘active users’ in India at end of September 2006.

JuxtConsult’s recently released ‘India Online 2007′ pegs Indian Internet user base at 30.32 million. 83% (approx 25 million) are ‘active users’. Of the 25 million ‘active users’, 20 million access the Internet every day.

active user ~ a user who logs on to the Internet at least once in 30 days.

So, if someone was looking for accurate estimates on Internet usage in India, which report is to be believed ?

The ‘ever user’ metric is crap and the ‘active user’ isnt convincing enough to me.

The TRAI report seems to be much more convincing and reliable. As per the report, there are 8.582 million Internet subscribers of which, the broadband subscriber base stands at 2.054 million.

It would be safe to assume that the 2.054 million broadband subscribers in India constitute the ‘Innovators’ and the ‘Early Adopters’ segment in the Technology adoption life cycle graph below. After all, they wouldnt be spending on a broadband connection if they werent technology enthusiasts.

I — Innovators, EA — Early Adopters, C — Chasm, P — Pragmatists (early majority), P — Pragmatists (Late majority), T — Traditionalists. For an explanation on what each of the above user base means, see here.

In an earlier post, I attempted to create a taxonomy of the Indian Internet websites. If you plot this taxonomy against the technology adoption life cycle graph, we can try to roughly estimate where exactly each class of Indian websites lie on the tech adoption life cycle graph.

The portals and the News and Infotainment sites lie in the Pragmatists (P) late majority section. E-commerce, banking sites like ICICI, Ebay etc. fall into the Early Majority section. The vertical like online matrimony, jobs, travel are on the border of the Early Majority and the Late majority section (slowly treading into the late majority section). Social networking sites like Orkut, Ibibo etc. fall into the Early Adopter section while Web 2.0 startups fall into the Innovators section.

I think blogs fall into the early adopter section. They still need to cross ‘the Chasm’ to hit some acceptable majority.

{Begin Rant}

It is in this chasm lie the current problems - people need to be educated about what blogs are, what purpose they solve. That blogs are not the end service providers. As Kamla says, the traditional media should probably play a bigger role in educating people on blogs, the power of blogs etc.

{/End Rant}
This is a rough attempt on my part - feel free to provide any input you may have. It would be great to get some varied perspectives about this.

Comments

June 19, 2007, VentureWoods » Just 85 lakh internet subscribers? - India Venture Capital and Startup Blog commented: [...] Startup Dunia has an interesting post on this. (Which is where I got the links) [...]
June 19, 2007, Indus Khaitan commented: I think this a sign of good times to come for the internet in India. If we look at history, the US Internet population in 1997 was 20 million and the traffic at major backbones (MCI, UUNET, Sprint, etc.) was around 3000 TB/month. I would love to see any report around bandwidth usage, number of hosts etc. from the Indian geo. IMHO, the growth of Internet in India is sitting in the "chasm" (a la Moore) between early adopters and the early majority ("pragmatists"). The ingredients of moving this are already coming together viz. grassroots entreprenuership, startups, VC Funding, Proto.in, etc.
July 17, 2007, Rajiv commented: link to the explanation of the segments is not working
July 17, 2007, pranav commented: hey rajiv, thanks for pointing that out...I'll get an alternative link later today..
February 1, 2008, alokparna commented: What would be the number (approx) of technology start-ups in India and whats the growth graph?
June 12, 2008, vikash commented: PURCHASE USED(BRANDED) LAPTOP/DESKTOP , TFT, MONITOR IN NEW CONDITION AT BEST PRIZE ONLY AT ---- V.INFOTECH C-193 PKT-11 JASOLA VIHAR NEWDELHI-25 PH-9990955807, 9212698620

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