Forecast: India to reach 1bn Internet users by 2025
September 24, 2020
According to data estimations calculated by the Atlas VPN research team, India is set to reach 1 billion Internet users by the year 2025. As of 2020 to date, there are over 687.6 million Internet users in India.
The Internet penetration rate in India reached 50 per cent at the start of 2020. Meaning, already half of the population in India accesses the Internet regularly. This is a relatively rapid increase, looking at the fact that in 2015, only 19 per cent of Indians actively used the internet.
On average, India’s Internet user base was growing by 24 per cent per year from 2015 to 2020.
It is unrealistic to expect that Internet adoption will nearly triple in the next five years like it did in the last five. Nevertheless, even with a slower growth rate, Atlas VPN projections reveal that by 2025, India will reach 1 billion active web surfers.
The forecast predicts that, on average, people surfing the Internet in India will increase by 9.18 per cent per year until 2025. Meaning, India is arguably the world’s most promising Internet economy. This should interest corporations, as many business markets are set to grow.
This is also positive news for Indian citizens, says Atlas VPN, as the widely spread Internet will bring countless new jobs as well as e-commerce and service opportunities.
The rise in Internet users has seen social media usage skyrocket by 48 per cent, or 130 million people, between April 2019 and January 2020. This is a mind-boggling trajectory which clearly shows how fast Indians are adapting to the most popular Internet services.
India – second largest Internet user base globally
Internet user numbers and penetration rate varies widely around the world. Many developed countries see Internet penetration rate upwards of 70 per cent while those with less advanced cyberspace hover below 45 per cent.
Moreover, the top 20 countries’ internet users add up to a total of 3.24 billion users. At the same time, the rest of the world is left with only 1.33 billion internauts, for a total of 4.57 billion web surfers globally.
Despite the fact that India’s Internet penetration is only 50 per cent, it is already the second-largest Internet user base in the world, only behind China.
These two countries have almost identical populations. Meaning, if India’s cyberspace continues to develop at a rapid pace, it could get close to or even overtake China’s web surfer numbers. On the other hand, China’s Internet penetration rate is only at 59 per cent, so it also has a lot of space for expansion.
The US is third on the list with over 313 million active Internet users. Interestingly, with a 331 million population, the US Internet penetration rate reaches a staggering 95.56 per cent.