Co-written with Neeraj Kumar of India Upcoming
It’s an exciting time for the
economy in India, which is also reflected in its Web market. India has 1.1 Billion people
and the average age of the nation is just 24.9 years. The Indian GDP is growing at 8% +
and after years of dependence on the agriculture sector, now the service sector
contributes more than 50% of the GDP. It’s testament to the growth of the service sector
that even though India produces 350,000 new engineers a year, there is still a shortage
of graduates to meet the demand of the high GDP growth rate (
source: LA Times).
Internet usage
The number of Internet users in India is estimated at between 45 Million
and 50
Million. That makes India the 4th biggest country in the world in terms of total
Internet users – behind only the US, China and Japan. However due to India’s huge
population, its Internet Penetration is among the lowest in the world at only
4.5%. What’s more, it is estimated that only 10 million of those users are real power
users who spend money online. While there is seemingly a lot of room for growth in the
Indian market, a recent report quoted by
contentSutra indicates that “there’s a long way to go before a critical mass is
reached…” Another challenge is that there are 23 mainstream
languages that are spoken in India.
Top Web apps
NOTE: We can’t hope to cover all the web apps in India, so please don’t be offended if
we’ve missed your app. We invite you to add more Indian web apps in the comments
section.
India’s eBay
Bazee.com ( it means ‘betting’ in Hindi)
was probably the first Indian website to make a buzz in the market, when it was acquired
by eBay. It’s still very successful and a thriving site in India.
Matrimonial sites
In India there are lot of matrimonial sites. The complete list is available at http://indiaupcoming.com/tag/matrimonial.
Among them all, Shaadi.com and BharatMatrimony.com are probably the most
successful. Both of these sites have plans to diversify into other regional languages
too.
Online Travel
Although currently the online travel sector comprises a mere 2.2 per cent of the
domestic travel market, it has the potential for high growth and the field is heating up.
Among the players, MakeMyTrip.com is very successful
– although it’s facing tough competition from other notable players like Yatra.com and Arzoo.com. It should be noted that Arzoo.com is founded by Sabeer Bhatia, the co-founder of
Hotmail.
Digg clones
It’s interesting to note that there are a number of digg.com clones –
but none of them has any major traction in the market.
There is also rambhai.com, which was emailed to me recently with the note: “Yes from the tech perspective it is like a Digg clone. But the content and community are genuinely Indian and that is our focus.” So it is localized content, which has been a theme in this series.
News Portals
Rediff.com is the most widely used news portal.
It’s a public company and provides services in matrimonial, auction,
classified, shopping, travel deals, chat, photo albums, social networking, and more.
Jobs
Naukri.com is the most widely used job portal and
it has a significant lead over rivals like MonsterIndia.com
Real estate
The growth in the service sector has fuelled growth in the real estate market in
India. There are a number of players, but 99acres.com took an early lead in this field by using
well positioned ads.
Online movie rentals
Seventymm.com is
India’s largest online movie rental service, offering access to over 10,000 titles across multiple languages. In this field the competitors are CatchFlix.com, ClixFlix.com, HomeView.in and CineSprite.com
Web Office
Zoho is a sponsor of ReadWriteWeb and it is from
India. It produces world class collaborative tools and is highly regarded in India.
Online Photos
There are a number of sites where one can upload the pictures of a trip to Disneyland
– and a copy of those pictures will be mailed (as in snail mail, not email!) to the
family in India. This service is targeted towards Indians who are in the US or UK, and
whose family don’t have internet services in their home in India. Players in this
field are 123Shots, itasveer, Picsquare and Merasnap.
Other notable sites
- Pixrat.com is a popular social bookmark for
pictures. - Burrp! is a fun and easy way to check out and
share reviews and recommendations about establishments in your city and your
neighborhood. - Tezaa is an online community that is all about
polls. - MouthShut.com is a platform for consumers to
voice their opinions on thousands of products and services. - DesiMatch.com is a dating site.
- RadioVeRVe (formerly Infinity Radio) is for
independent musicians across the country to promote themselves. - Bixee.com is a web-crawling robot that visits
websites containing job information. - BangaloreLive.com and MumbaiLive.com are sites providing local news, music
and gossip. - MeraVideo.com and ApnaTube.com are video sharing sites.
Disclaimer:Neeraj Kumar contributed to this
article and the site IndiaUpcoming.com is
maintained by him.
Richard’s note: I want to thank Neeraj very much for all the great information
in this post. As with all the other International posts we’ve done on Read/WriteWeb,
there are bound to be web apps we’ve neglected to mention. For that I apologize in
advance, but please feel free to add them to the comments here. Also if you are familiar
with India’s web market, we’d love to hear your views and stories.
This post is part of Read/WriteWeb’s continuing coverage of international Web markets.
Other countries profiled so far have been Germany, Holland, Poland, Korea, United Kingdom, Russia, Spain, China, Turkey, Italy, Brazil, France and Japan.
