A great new study by eMarketer on the Indian online market lays to rest some of the burning questions in my (and your) mind on the size of the Indian Internet marketing. In one word, its SMALL! It’s small today and even as per their projections, it will remain small in the foreseeable future. Well it’s small when talking in relative terms to other countries. See chart below:
http://www.emarketer.com/images/chart_gifs/072001-073000/072599.gif
What is exciting for me however is the fact that the number of internet users in India is going to be more than 5 times that in Australia, and almost double of those in South Korea! Yes the size of this market is growing at a scorching pace. The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) predicts a 100 million internet users in India by 2007, slightly higher than eMarketer’s predictions. Either way you look at it there is going to be a huge amount of users accessing the internet in India in the next few years. And we have’nt even included the potential of mobile internet into these figures yet!
http://www.emarketer.com/images/chart_gifs/073001-074000/073470.gif
And, they are going to be buying. Once again IAMAI, predicts that these users are going to generate over US $ 500 million in revenues by 2006-2007. A mere drop in the bucket when compared to online retail revenues in more developed countries, estimates of this figure in the US are upwards of a US$100 billion. But pretty substantial all the same when thought of in the Indian context. What is this $500 million going kitty going to hold, by the looks of it currently – my guess is online gifts & travel. But who knows what else … what is exciting is some of the categories are not even defined yet, one thing is for sure, there is clearly going to be a market waiting to be served here.
October 13, 2006 at 2:59 pm |
Wonder what the blogging scene in India will be few years down the line.
October 13, 2006 at 3:30 pm |
Well what would be interesting to see my friend, is which blogs in India start to make a commercial success of themselves. As in the US, you have seen a few blogs starting to make money either through ad networks or through proving to be a viable media alternative for all that money moving to advertising online. And I don’t just mean Google Ads !