eIndia
The numbers about India’s Internet and smartphone penetration:
- Internet: 570-600 million (2019), going to 950-1000 million (2025) – Zomato
- Smartphone: 33% penetration (2019), going to 58% by 2025 – Zomato
- Active Internet users: 400-430 million (2019) – Zomato
- Online service users: 220-250 million (2019) – Zomato
- Online shoppers: 120-150 million (2019) – Zomato
- Social media users: 300-350 million average monthly active users in 2020 across platforms like Facebook, Youtube and Instagram – Nykaa
A chart from Patym has similar data about the top of the funnel:
More from Policybazaar:
This chart shows a sharper comparison with China:
Another view of the India-China comparison from Nykaa, and a view of India in 2025 comparing favourably in absolute numbers with China in 2020:
As we can see, China is at 4X of India in online shoppers. Given that China’s per capita GDP is 5X of India ($10,000 vs $2,000), this gives a 20X differential in spending potential in China vs India. This shows up clearly in the analysis of the food delivery market:
At $90 billion China’s online food delivery market is almost 22X of India’s $4.2 billion, as per Zomato’s estimate based on 2019 data.
MobiKwik’s estimates offer a broader definition of online transactors:
The difference between transactors and shoppers is highlighted below by Mobikwik:
