According to a recent report by Live Mint only 10% of Indian citizens are able to use Internet however it’s been 18 years since the time internet was introduced in the country. As per another report by eStatsIndia.com, Indian population in the year 2010 was 1.03 billion, which increased to 1.23 billion by the end of the year 2013. However, talking about the internet users, the number increased from 69.2 million to 116.18 million, which is actually 9.6 per cent of the total population. Besides, as per the estimation made by them there was 268 million households in the country in the year 2012 while the internet penetration in households was only 7.2 percent. Only 19.2 million users subscribed to the internet in the year 2012. As per the report India happens to be at the bottom spot in computer and Internet penetration.
However, the good news says that the scenario will sooner be different as the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, GOI, with some of its projects like National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN), is going to take initiatives to bridge this gap. According to the project ‘NOFN’ a minimum 10 megabits per second (mbps) broadband optic fibre connection will be provided to each Gram Panchayat. As per the project, at least eight lakh people will be made digitally literate. It intends to make at least one person per household digitally literate with the help of the private sector and the civil society. Rupees 100 crore have been allocated to accomplish this mission.
According to the prediction by eStatsIndia.com report, India is expected to have 14.8 million mobile Internet buyers by the end of the year 2013. Not just that there will be 27.28 million internet buyers in 53 cities by the end of 2013 and there will be almost 18.34 million mobile internet buyers. It is expected that digital marketing will now have its reach to Indian villages as well.