According to recent IAMAI report, Mumbai is the number one city when it comes to number of Internet users in India. Delhi comes in second!
However, quite surprisingly Kolkata has more internet users than the silicon valley of India, Bangalore. Kolkata has 6.27 million users compared to Bangalore’s 5.99 million. Kolkata has jumped two places compared to last year from fifth to third just behind Delhi.
Top 8 Indian Cities with highest Internet users
While Mumbai has the highest number of internet users, Delhi registered maximum growth as compared to last year. They had 8.1 million in 2013 compared to 12.15 million in 2014, a growth over 50 percent compared to last year.
Mumbai grew at 37 percent Y-O-Y followed by Bangalore at 36 percent Y-O-Y. Pune and Hyderabad registered a growth of 33 percent each.
Overall, the top 4 metros (Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai) have a 23% penetration of Internet Users in India. The other 4 Metros (Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune) have 11% penetration of Internet Users, with Bangalore registering the highest growth.
Internet Users in A Cities
Among the smaller cities (who have population of more than 10 lakh people), Surat registered maximum number of users with 2.97 million users followed by Jaipur and Lucknow.
While the internet penetration in Metro’s is quite respectable at 23 percent, all other cities in India have close to 10 percent penetration or lower. And overall, in rural areas, internet penetration is abysmally low.
Considering that majority of Indian population still resides in rural areas, on a global level, India has one of the poorest internet penetration in the world.
The reasons for poor internet penetration are many, but the 2 most important factors remain to be poor broadband connectivity and high internet prices. Infact, due to rise in mobile phones, India has more or less skipped the broadband generation and moved to mobile internet, which again is quite expensive to most most people in India.
We hope the new Government, which is more technology tilted than any of the previous ones, takes this seriously and ensures that internet penetration improves in India.
[IAMAI report]