PM Narendra Modi in Silicon Valley stresses the importance of Indian language content

Few basic stats of the internet space in India,

• 320 million internet user base (~25% internet penetration)
• Demography: 16- 25 years (37%), 26-35 years (38%), 36-45 (16%), Others (9%, which includes me!)
• Urban internet base 62%, rural internet base 38%
• Total mobile internet is over 250 million – 121 million 3G mobile users, 2G still bigger than 3G in India.
• Urban mobile internet users 75%, rural at 25%. Growing at 55% year-on-year.
• Smartphone penetration in India: 10% against the global penetration at 25%.
• 88% of India’s population is non-English speaking.
• Local language internet user base 127 million, growing 47% year-on-year.

Clearly, regional langauge users will dominate the growth of internet user base in India. The internet eco system cannot afford to ignore this big user base which is yet to be tapped.

Glad to say Oneindia has been serving this user base for over 10 years. By 2020 the market size of language advertising in digital space is estimated to reach $1.1 billion – can you afford to ignore this?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the US in September 2015 has been a huge success, especially in the Silicon Valley. CEOs of major media houses met Modi in New York for round table meet on ‘Media, Technology & Communications-Growth story of India’.

In San Jose on September 27 PM met few of the most important CEOs over dinner to discuss his vision on Digital India. In his speech to a packed audience he said,

For me, access also means that content should be in local languages. In a country with 22 official languages, it is a formidable, but an important task.

I am glad he brought up the issues of Indian languages in his speech. The only way more internet users will be motivated to get onto the digital highway is if they find good content and services in a language they understand.