The appetite for Internet consumption in India will increase steadily over the next 3 years as more and more users log onto the World Wide Web, and Rajan Anandan VP, South East Asia and India at Google, says they will need an Internet that is much different from what it is today. At the Google[1] for India event in New Delhi, Anandan spoke about the growth of Internet usage in the country over the past year and the needs of the future that must be addressed today. He also revealed that India, where most of the population is yet to access the Internet, still makes its presence felt in the global rankings.
Of the 400 million Internet users in the country, 330 million access it using a smartphone, showing the current crop of consumers is bypassing the desktop computer altogether. Anandan also said that India became a broadband nation in the past 15 months; since last year, 4G speeds have become more accessible and mobile data plans have become more affordable. On average, a connected mobile user in India consumes 4GB data a month, he said, adding that Google sees this figure hitting 11GB in the next 4 years.
Of the 1.5 billion YouTube[2] users across the globe, 225 million are mobile users from India, and the country ranks on top on Google Play, with over 1 billion app downloads every month. 28 percent of search queries in India are done by voice, and Hindi voice search queries are growing at over 400 percent year on year.
While roughly 900 million in the country still do not have access to the Web, Google estimates that 250 million of these will come online by 2020, bringing the total Internet users...