Internet users in India to cross 450 million by June: IAMAI

According to a report by Internet and Mobile Association Of India (IAMAI), the number of internet users in India is expected to reach between 450-465 million by June 2017.

"The report finds that urban India has close to 60 percent internet penetration, reflecting a level of saturation. However, with rural India having only 17 percent penetration, there is still large scope of development," report said.

"While, the growth of internet usage in India is mainly being fuelled by the rural sector, the urban user base starting to show signs of levelling out," it added.

The report also finds that 51 percent of urban Internet users or 137.19 million use internet daily. On the other hand, 242 million or 90 percent of the urban internet user's user's use internet once a month.

In rural India, 48 percent (around 78 million) are daily Internet users, while about 140 million (83 per cent) are estimated to use Internet once a month.

'Lack of awareness on benefits of Internet' emerged as the main reason for not using Internet among non-users in the country, followed by factors like lack of knowledge of computers, the report said.

Interstingly, the report pointed that mobile phones are the primary devices for accessing the Internet across demographics. About 77 per cent of urban and 92 per cent of rural users consider mobile as the primary device for accessing the Internet and the largest services accessed in urban India are online communications (e-mail etc) and social networking, for rural India, entertainment (video/audio content etc) is the main driver of Internet consumption.

E-commerce services like online ticketing or e-tailing (online shopping) are much more prevalent in urban India, while these services clearly haven't made much inroads in rural India, the report said.