The “The Future of Internet in India” report from the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) predicts that there will be 730 million Internet users in India by 2020.
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India, which has an Internet user base next only to China, will remain the fastest growing market, the report’s authors wrote, adding that 75 per cent of the new users would come from rural areas.
“There’s a lot of turbulence in global economy.We did mention some short term impact of Brexit on the industry, but there is no need to revisit it (growth projection)”, said R Chandrashekhar, president Nasscom.
India will surpass US internet users as internet consumption of India has already exceeded that of USA.
The overall e-commerce market in India valued at $17 billion in 2015-16, and this is expected to reach $ 34 billion with 175 million individuals transacting online.
Online shopping is expected to edge out travel as the primary driver of online transactions accounting for two-thirds of the total e-Commerce market by 2020.
Sidharth Malik, VP & MD India, Akamai Technologies, said this will also present a great opportunity for enterprises to harness the power of the Internet to innovate and scale up operations. With the mobile phones emerging as the preferred device for shopping, it will account for 70% of total online shopping. This is despite the proportion of travel transactions carried out online hitting 50 percent over the same period.
India will have an estimated 702 million smart phones in users with the affordability of mobile phones coming into the purview of middle class families.
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Startups can look forward to 10-times more funding by 2020, which means that $420 billion of funding would be received by Indian startups, compared to $40 billion previous year. An overwhelming majority (75%) of new users will consume data in local languages, it said.
