Internet users in India will increase to 800 million in four years: McKinsey report

With mobile data cost witnessing a significant drop in recent years, Internet users in India will swell to 750-800 million as per the latest data by McKinsey Global Institute.

India is already home to one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing bases of digital consumers and is digitizing faster than many mature and emerging economies, said 'Digital India - Technology to Transform a Connection Nation' report.

The number of smartphones will double to 700 million, it added. The report also expects core digital sectors to grow double to $355-435 billion in the next seven years.

The report further hailed Reliance Jio for bringing internet-enabled services to millions of consumers. The cheap mobile data saw a rise in consumption per user at over 150% annually.

Indian mobile data users consume 8.3 gigabits (GB) of data each month on average, compared with 5.5 GB for mobile users in China. Indians have downloaded more apps - 12.3 billion in 2018.

The average Indian social media user spends 17 hours on the platforms each week, more than social media users in China and the United States.

In the last eight years, the share of Indian adults with at least one digital financial account has more than doubled to 80 percent.

Despite these growths, the report expects that India has plenty of room to grow. About 90 percent of all retail transactions in India, by volume, are still made with cash and very few percentages of people are doing online trade, it added.

Mckinsey surveyed over 600 large and small companies in India to gauge the level of digitization.