In about a decade that Internet has been in India, its usage has evolved more in ‘depth’ than in ‘spread’. That is, its impact and growth is being driven more by the ‘increased usage’ by those who are already using the net for some time, rather than by those who are getting added to the pie as new users. While only 8% of the urban net users have been using it for less than a year, 80% of them have been using it for more than 3 years now.
These and some other key insights on Internet users in India have emerged out of one of the largest online surveys conducted by JuxtConsult in April 2005 among the Internet users in India. The survey sampled more than 30,000 net users with the aim to unravel not only who all are using the Internet but also what are their lifestyle preferences. To estimate the penetration of Internet among urban Indians a 10 city telephonic survey with over 3,000 people was also conducted.
In our own estimate, Internet is being used by around 17.5 million urban Indians with some regularity. With another 5.2 million using it sparingly, its upper bound is around 23 million urban users currently. This puts the penetration of Internet among urban Indians at around 9%. For all of India, assuming some marginal usage in rural areas, the penetration level should be around 2% or so.
In terms of ‘depth’ of usage, almost a third of the urban Internet users are using the net for more than 3 hours every day. Interestingly, around a third of them are using the net ‘throughout the day’ and around a third of them are logging on to the net at least 5 times a day. Clearly, urban India is seeing the emergence of a ‘netoholic’.
The caricature of a typical net user (if at all one exists) is no way near to the ‘savvy professional’ that the advertisers and marketers typically project. The savvy professional probably does not represent more than the ‘tip’ of the iceberg of the urban Indian net users. The typical net user is more the ‘understated’ regular soul. However, he does represent a ‘reasonably’ decent purchasing power. Every three out of four net users own an automobile of some kind and every second net user has a credit card.
About 25% of net users buy online with any regularity. Therefore, in our estimation there are around 4.2 million online buyers in urban India.
Some other important findings about the urban Indian net users are as follows:
- Net users are largely adults and mostly men.
- For most net users, logging on to the net is a daily routine.
- There are no ‘prime times’ in Internet usage.
- Internet still plays a fairly ‘cursory’ rather than any profound role in most people’s work or personal lives.
- Increase in computing time is not necessarily leading to a corresponding increase in the net usage.
- One in four net user prefers to use the net to pay bills online.
- The real barriers stopping the existing net users from using it more are ‘technical’.
- Emails seem to be a better marketing option than advertising on the net.
To grow exponentially in urban India, Internet would need to break two major barriers. One is the ‘real’ barrier of solving the technical issues related to speed and connectivity. The second is the ‘perceptual’ barrier of creating a more ‘persuasive’ relevance of Internet in people’s overall lives rather than just in their work lives. The big challenge for the net marketers is to transform the ‘netholics’ into the ‘netsumers’.
About JuxtConsult
JuxtConsult, a joint effort of Indicus Analytics and Webchutney, has been involved in doing such online surveys to unravel the net users and netsumers in urban India for last one year. JuxtConsult is also in the process of evolving online research methodologies and analytical models to create better and faster quantitative performance measures for marketers to track their brand and consumers regularly on a real-time basis.
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