Digital population in India 2024, by type

The introduction of the government’s Digital India initiative, hand in hand with the increasing internet penetration over the recent years, resulted in the country’s digital population surging over 751 million active users as of January 2024. The traffic in the world’s second largest internet market at this stage was largely dominated by mobile internet users.

The causes and their effects

The arrival of Reliance Jio services in 2007, provided people in the country with schemes and subsidies that were not only attractive, but easily affordable, irrespective of their income levels and socio-economic classes. The impact was almost instant, with over 60 percent of the mobile data traffic coming from Jio services in less than ten years of its launch.

The future holds greater promise

The number of internet users had increased over the years in rural as well as the urban areas . It seemed likely from previous trends that the launch of the Jio fixed line broadband service, called Gigafiber might aid in the already increasing internet penetration across the country. Along with the demonetization in late 2016, digitization penetrated the country at a staggering rate, nearly 50 percent in 2019.