"India has the third largest number of Internet users in the world right now, at around 150 million users, and most of the new additions have been mobile users. That’s a huge audience, and what we’re seeing is that the Internet has gone mainstream. Around 50 million people are watching video online, up from 15 million two years ago. Around 37% of all YouTube viewers in India are doing so on a mobile device.
One area that’s of particular interest to us is the small business uptake. SMB (small and medium businesses) ads have been growing in the triple digits, with large adoption. Our role there has been to help build the ecosystem. We’re also seeing some very positive trends with e-commerce. I think that the industry reached its inflection point at the end of 2011. The growth was around 40% in 2011, and in 2012 it was 120%. People became familiar with buying things on the Net...
The audience has also definitely become more sophisticated, and the kinds of offerings available now, prove that.For example, “Local” is growing now; it’s in its early days, and there isn’t enough data in place yet, but if you look at things like Maps, or movie ticketing, or look at a company like online food and restaurant guide Zomato, then you can see that there is a lot of great potential, and I think that by the end of 2014 all the pieces will be in place for this to really grow."
The future is very bright as far as m and e services are concerned. As I have written earlier in my post titled, "
M Education & the Demographic Dividend," which may be seen under posts labeled
Mobile Education, India is a young country with 54% of the population being under 25. In fact India is often cited as an example of the demographic dividend whereby the larger relative share of working age population has the potential to progress the economy to higher rates of growth.
In the near future India will be the largest individual contributor to the global demographic transition. A 2011 International Monetary Fund Working Paper found that substantial portion of the growth experienced by India since the 1980s is attributable to the country’s age structure and changing demographics. The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that India will surpass China as the world’s largest country by 2025, with a large proportion of those in the working age category. Over the next two decades the continuing demographic dividend in India could add about two percentage points per annum to India’s per capita GDP growth.[ Extreme actions are needed to take care of future basic minimum living standards including food, water and energy. As per Population Reference Bureau India's population in 2050 is projected to be 1.692 billion people. (Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_dividend)
Thus, educating, employing and mainstreaming all segments of India's youth and working age population is critical for socio-economic progress. I have also mentioned earlier in several posts including those labeled
Broadband Ecosystem, that locally relevant content in the local language is the key to growth. Mr Anandan too has drawn attention to the fact that the next 300 million customers in India will not speak English. The spread of local language content will be helped along with "improvements in speech to text and voice controls." He has very rightly pointed out that internet offers more value in small towns which are in fact driving growth. I believe that this is also true of rural India.
"there is tremendous potential in rural markets especially given the background of robust mobile connectivity and the imminent spread of broadband to rural India. What rural India needs desperately is information, knowledge and urban quality services. This translates into a huge market opportunity for providers of ICT enabled access to information, education, health, financial services, commerce and employment opportunities etc."
I had also mentioned that,
"it is amazing how many an urban Indian actually believes that there would necessarily be very low demand for broadband in rural areas. Already there are more internet users in small towns than the top eight metros put together. Interestingly more than 20% users are school children and 10% users belong to lowest socio-economic strata . While only a minority of rural Indians may be able to afford individual access to broadband on account lack of computing devices and power, this does not imply a lack of demand for broadband enabled services. In interactions during the verification of USOF’s wire line broadband scheme, it has clearly emerged that better off rural families across the country do buy computers for the same reasons as urban families do -children’s education, knowledge and entertainment or as an aid to their incomes/businesses. They would relish good broadband connectivity as much as urban Indians do........There is also a healthy demand for public access broadband facilities. This is logical in the face of near absence of local infrastructure and services. Just as an urban Indian searches online when looking for a new or locally unavailable information, service or product, rural Indians too would like to research/access the same online. This is a rural reality even today. Booking journey tickets online is a simple example. If credit cards are a problem intermediaries (village level entrepreneurs (VLEs)) with credit cards step in to facilitate transactions. VLEs also facilitate online money transfers, download mobile software etc. Skype is just as useful and popular amongst rural Indians as a means to reach out to relatives in cities/abroad. This demand will only grow as the rural literacy rate rises beyond the current 68.91% and knowledge and e-connectivity increasingly become key to empowerment. The demographic profile of our country means that more than 50%.rural Indians are less than 25 years old. They have the same affinity for the worldwide web as urban youth. I have personally seen rural school girls downloading online games with as enthusiastically as any city-bred child. The frustration with the speed of the connection was palpable!"
