According to Rajan Anandan, the managing director at Google India, the number of internet users in India will surpass that of the United States by the end of the year, making India the country with the second most internet users in the world behind only China.
India currently has over 200 million internet users, but that is less than 20% of the country’s population, compared to the over 80% internet penetration that the United States has. However, that percentage is expected to rise to around 50% by 2018.
“Even at the current growth rate, we will have 500 million Indians on the Internet by 2018. By the end of this year, India will become larger than the U.S. in terms of number of Internet users. By 2018, India will have twice the number of Internet users as the U.S. does. Almost half the country will be connected through the Internet,” said Mr. Anandan.
He mention that it took India a decade to go from 10 million internet users to 100 million, and now the country is adding a whopping 5 million internet users every month. By the year 2018, Mr. Anandan expects the number of internet users in India to reach 500 million.
“A lot of people talk about the last elections and how urban India was mobilised using the Internet. We have seen nothing yet in terms of what the Internet can do to every aspect of life, of society and of governance. By the next elections almost half a billion Indians will be connected through Internet. In terms of the kind of mobilization, can you imagine what it can do?”
Read more about the story at Quartz.
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