Digital and Social Media Landscape in India

With the deep penetration of internet connectivity among people, the number of social media users in India have been growing constantly. The Indian government-sponsored Digital India initiative has also contributed greatly to this growth. The year 2020, which came under the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic, saw much resort to social media to gather information or to express themselves and several new topics and conversations began trending on social media in India. As social media users began to rise, so did digital ad spends. Data reveals that this growth and different trends on social media in India are poised to continue. Let’s now look at the digital and social media landscape in India in detail.

Internet Penetration & Audience

The number of internet users had increased over the years in rural as well as urban areas. This is expected to cross the 639 million mark by December 2020.

India has 574 million active Internet users as of 2019. India is the second-largest online market, behind China. It is estimated that by December 2020 there will be around 639 million active internet users in India. The majority of India’s internet users are mobile phone internet users, who take advantage of cheap alternatives to expensive broadband/ Wi-Fi connections that require PC, laptop, and other equipment. Indian mobile data users consume 11 gigabits (GB) of data each month on average, India is the highest globally, ahead of markets like China, the US, France, South Korea, Japan, Germany, and Spain. The overall data traffic in India increased by 47% in 2019 driven by continued 4G consumption. 4G constituted 96% of the total data traffic consumed across the country while 3G data traffic registered its highest-ever decline of 30%. Indians have 1.2 billion mobile phone subscriptions and will be downloaded in 2019.

At a state level, NCT of Delhi has registered the highest internet penetration followed by Kerala, J&K, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab. States in the east of India except for Assam and North East, have low internet penetration.

Internet penetration is rising throughout India, the situation is different when it comes to metros with Mumbai having the highest internet population closely followed by Delhi. Overall top 8 metros have the most penetration of Internet users and smaller towns have relatively lesser penetration of the Internet as we descend to lower town classes.

Among state groups, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and NCT of Delhi have a higher proportion of female internet users. The split of Male and Female users is 60:40 in Metros with a 5 million-plus population size.

Government initiatives in Kerala like bringing high-speed internet to every household, including its 2 million Below Poverty Line families who would get service for free will aid in reaching out to more potential internet users.

Source: Internet & Mobile Association of India (IAMAI)

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