If there’s been any doubt about India being the next major target market for tech businesses, Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker’s latest Internet Trends Report should make that clear as day.
The report, which spans 355 pages, dedicates 55 pages solely to the state of internet and mobile access in India.
The first major takeaway is that the country now has 355 million internet users, which amounts to roughly 27 percent of the population of 1.3 billion people. That’s up from 277 million in 2015.Chalk that up to the falling prices of smartphones and mobile data. The average cost of a handset is now far more affordable than a decade ago, having dropped from about $270 in 2007 to under $150 in 2016, and from over 25 percent of per capita GDP down to 8 percent.
Data plans are now half what they cost in 2014 – and India has major conglomerate Reliance to thank for that. The company’s Jio carrier launched last September with low-cost data plans on its 4G network that blew the competition out of the water. Of the 108 million people who signed up for the free trials, 72 million have converted into paying subscribers.
So yes, mobile internet use is certainly on the rise – since 2014, it’s skyrocketed from under 100 million GB a month to nearly 1,200 million GB a month, with a 9x growth seen between last June and March 2017. It’s not surprising that…
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