Usage Patterns
| Total Online Population (000's) in 2011 | 100,000 |
| Percentage of Population Online in 2011 | 8.4% |
Demographics
There were 100,000,000 internet users in India (representing 8.4% of the population) in June 2011, according to Internet World Stats. This represented 10.7% of the Asian population. (Internet World Stats, August 2011)
There are an estimated 40 million internet subscribers in India in 2010, according to PhoCusWright quoting data from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.
Internet subscribers in India, 2005-2010:
- 2005: 6.9 million
- 2006: 9.3 million
- 2007: 11.1 million
- 2008: 13.5 million
- 2009: 15.2 million
- 2010: 40 million
Almost 4 in 10 don't know how or don't have interest in using PCs or the internet, according to PhoCusWright's India Travel Marketplace: Technology and Transformation Report. (PhoCusWright presentation "The Emerging Online Travel Marketplace in China, India and Brazil" at the ETC e-Business Academy, Belgrade on SlideShare, October 2010)
Digital Media
30.2 million online users in India watched online video in January 2011, representing 72% of the total online population, according to a report by comScore.
Google Sites ranked as the top online video viewing destination in India across several metrics. More than 23.5 million viewers watched a total of 785 million videos on Google Sites, with viewers averaging 1.7 viewing hours during the month. Viewership at Google Sites was mainly driven by YouTube.com which accounted for 780.7 million videos, representing 44.5% of all videos viewed in India in January. Facebook.com ranked second with 6.6 million viewers and 30.1 million videos viewed, followed by Metacafe in third place with 3.9 million viewers. India-based properties Network 18 and Rediff.com India Ltd. both ranked among the top 10 largest video properties reaching 1.2 million and 861,000 viewers, respectively. (comScore, March 2011)
Market
Travel Planning
A minority of Indian online travellers account for the majority of activity in the Indian online travel category, according to PhoCusWright's Indian Online Travel Traffic Report.The 20% most active of all unique visitors to the travel category - defined as "heavy online travellers" - account for the lion's share of both travel category visits and time spent on travel websites.
Heavy online travellers accounted for nearly 60% of visits to the Indian online travel category in December 2010 and more than 75% of time spent. This active group of Indian online travel shoppers is an attractive target for travel companies aiming to turn lookers into bookers.
Only a handful of Indian travel websites have succeeded in attracting a significant share of India's heavy online traveler population. Rail websites have the highest penetration of heavy online travelers, followed by the leading Indian OTAs: MakeMyTrip, Yatra and Cleartrip. This shortlist of successful suitors attracts a significantly larger share of India's most active online travellers compared to both global OTA brands and airlines.
As more of India's population accesses the internet, the share of Indians capable of shopping for and booking travel online will continue to grow. (PhoCusWright FYI, June 2011)
The number of visitors to travel sites increased 32% in the past year to 18.5 million visitors as more Indians turned to the web for their travel needs, according to comScore.
Each of the top ten properties in the category experienced strong growth in the past year. Indian Railways led as the most-visited Travel destination with 8.4 million visitors, an increase of 8% from the previous year. Online Travel Agent sites (OTAs) secured the remainder of the four top spots in the category. MakeMyTrip reached nearly 3.9 million visitors (up 63%) followed by Yatra Online with 3.5 million visitors (up 82%) and ClearTrip.com with more than 2.1 million visitors (up 80%). U.S.-based Expedia Inc. secured the #5 position with 1.8 million visitors (up 12%).
Top sites in the travel category by unique visitors, April 2011 (Total India - Age 15+, Home or work locations):
TOTAL INTERNET AUDIENCE: 43,269,000 (+13% compared to April 2010)
TRAVEL CATEGORY: 18,517,000 (+32%)
1. Indian Railways: 8,399,000 (+8%)
2. MakeMyTrip: 3,864,000 (+63%)
3. Yatra Online: 3,520,000 (+82%)
4. ClearTrip.com: 2,147,000 (+80%)
5. Expedia Inc: 1,832,000 (+12%)
6. TravelAdNetwork: 1,456,000 (+78%)
7. Mustseeindia.com: 1,049,000 (+138%)
8. Indiarailinfo.com: 922,000 (+42%)
9. Redbus.in: 807,000 (+99%)
10. HolidayIQ.com: 725,000 (+60%)
Of the 7.1 million people visiting the top three OTAs, MakeMyTrip, Yatra Online and ClearTrip.com, in April, more than 2 million users (29%) visited two or more of the three sites in April 2011. The remaining 71% of visitors checked in at only one of the three sites during the month demonstrating relatively strong brand loyalty among the top players. (comScore, June 2011)
Experian Hitwise revealed the most popular travel websites in India for the week ending May 7 2011 in the categories Agencies; Destinations and Accommodation and Airlines.
Top Agency websites in India for the week ending May 7 2011 by % of visits:
1. Make My Trip (www.makemytrip.co.in): 32.25%
2. Yatra (www.yatra.com): 21.44%
3. Cleartrip (www.cleartrip.com): 14.63%
Top Destinations and Accommodation websites in India for the week ending May 7 2011 by % of visits:
1. Maps Of India (www.mapsofindia.com) 13.16%
2. Tripadvisor India (www.tripadvisor.in) 12.70%
3. MustSeeIndia.com (www.mustseeindia.com): 7.21%
Top Airline websites in India for the week ending May 7 2011 by % of visits:
1. indiGo (www.goindigo.in): 16.07%
2. Jet Airways (www.jetairways.com): 14.98%
3. SpiceJet (www.spicejet.com): 12.64%
(tnooz - talking travel tech, May 2011)
Online traffic to rail websites exceeds that to all other travel categories in India, according to PhoCusWright's Indian Online Travel Traffic Report. In fact, as the online rail market matures, the product may also be providing a boost to India's local online travel agencies.
More than half of all unique visitors to India's online travel category visited a ground transportation website in the fourth Quarter of 2010, making it the largest online travel traffic category. Eight of the 10 most-trafficked ground transportation websites are focused on rail.
The website of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited (IRCTC), part of the government-owned Indian Railways, ranks as the largest travel website in Asia Pacific in terms of transactions. Yet, as the only transactional rail website in India (all other rail websites refer back to IRCTC for booking), the site has struggled with stability issues. While IRCTC reports that some 25% of transactions still fail at the payment gateway, site performance is improving, and the release of IRCTC's rail shopping and booking API has empowered online intermediaries to offer a superior rail shopping experience.
Traffic gains among India's top three OTAs, all of which are local players, may be due in part to their growing popularity among rail bookers. MakeMyTrip, Yatra and Cleartrip all added rail to their product mix by mid-2009 via the IRCTC API. While rail may not contribute significantly to intermediary revenue, it plays an important strategic role: the significant volume of rail shoppers may return subsequently to book other, more lucrative travel products. (PhoCusWright FYI, May 2011)
Google gives high marks to a Kerala Tourism marketing drive and claims the destination marketing organization is the first to reach out to inbound travellers through such a mobile campaign.
Kerala Tourism's iPhone and iPad campaign revolves around a short video, which Google posted on its Google Mobile Ads Blog. Highlighting the Kerala Tourism video on the blog gives Google a chance to show off AdMob, which Google acquired for $750 million in 2009.
The tie-in comes because the Kerala Tourism mobile campaign uses AdMob's Interactive Interstitial ad units, which enable users to browse and click to other content while the video is playing.
Google boldly predicts the Kerala video will attract 2.5 million views in a week, helped along by the Google Mobile Ads Blog post. The campaign was put together by ad agency MobME. (tnooz - talking travel tech, September 2010)
Travel sites now attract more than a third of India's total internet population, as more consumers are turning to the web to fulfill their travel planning and booking needs, according to a report by comScore.
The report found that traffic to the travel category (from a home or work location) grew to more than 14 million visitors, aged 15 and older, in April 2010, representing 37% of the total online population and an increase of 50% from the previous year.
With rail transit one of the most prevalent means of travelling through the country, Indian Railways ranked as the most-visited travel site with 7.7 million visitors, up 46% compared to the previous year. OTA MakeMyTrip ranked second with 2.4 million visitors (up 39%) followed by Yatra Online with 1.9 million visitors (up 60%). Several sites experienced triple-digit growth including Travelocity (up 134% to 812,000 visitors), IndiaRailInfo.com (up 340% to 647,000 visitors) and eRail.in (up 160% to 464,000 visitors).
India ranked second among all countries, behind only the UK, in terms of the average time spent per visitor in the category, spending an average of 38.4 minutes per visitor on travel sites during April and consuming 58 pages of content while visiting the category an average of 4 times throughout the month.
Will Hodgman, comScore executive vice president for the Asia-Pacific region, said that with half of all visitors to the category frequenting two or more travel sites during the month, it's clear that consumers are taking the time to diligently compare prices prior to completing their transactions. (eyefortravel, June 2010)
Travel booking
Indian travellers clearly prefer domestic Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), particularly among air and hotel shoppers, according to PhoCusWright's Indian Online Travel Traffic Report, created in partnership with comScore.
The report found that more than 40% of internet users in India visited the online travel category in 4Q10, representing a 45% increase in unique visitors year over year. By comparison, the total internet audience grew only 13% over the same period.
OTAs are playing a major role in driving online travel growth. Traffic to OTAs grew faster than that to both the airline and hotel supplier categories, increasing 65% from 4Q09 - 4Q10. In 4Q10, OTAs attracted more than double the unique monthly visitors as airlines, and nearly seven times more than hotel websites.
Led by New Delhi's MakeMyTrip, the top OTAs in India are all local players. Yatra and Cleartrip round out the top three, with the latter attracting over three times as many monthly unique visitors as the most popular global competitor - Travelocity India. But the global OTAs should not be counted out. Monthly unique visitors to Travelocity India grew more than 250% from 4Q09 - 4Q10, while traffic to Expedia India, the seventh most-trafficked OTA, more than doubled.
As more of India's population accesses the internet via both computers and mobile devices, the share of Indians capable of shopping for and booking travel online will continue to grow. (TravelDailyNews, May 2011)
Indian total online leisure/unmanaged business travel market is expected to be US$7.03 billion by 2012, according to PhoCusWright.
Indian online travel market:
- 2008: US$2,907 million (18% of all travel revenue)
- 2009: US$3,342 million (21% of all travel revenue)
- 2010: US$4,362 million (25% of all travel revenue)
- 2011: US$5,524 million (28% of all travel revenue)
- 2012: US$7,027 million (31% of all travel revenue)
Indian online travel market - Market share by Channel, 2007 vs 2010:
- Supplier: 58% in 2007 / 61% in 2010
- Online Travel Agencies: 27% / 29%
- Traditional Travel Agencies: 15% / 10%
Key facts on the Indian travel market:
- The India travel market is huge
- Growth is chaotic, not regulated
- International travel only counts for 9%, mostly to Asian destinations. But no limit to growth (no government-imposed limits as in China)
- 25% of travel is sold online, grows by 30% annually
- Social Media is huge and growing but ... low internet penetration. Social media will likely be mobile based.
The impact of the global recession was relatively small in India, and by 2012, nearly a third of travel industry gross bookings are expected to be completed online, according to PhoCusWright‘s Indian Online Travel Overview Third Edition.
The Indian travel marketplace totaled $15.8 billion in 2009, and is on track to grow to nearly $20 billion by 2011. (PhoCusWright, September 2010)
UGC and Social Media
Social media has now become part of everyday life for a majority of online Indians. Nearly 30 million Indians who are online are members of social networking sites and about two-thirds of them spend time on these social networking sites daily, according to a study on social media usage by The Nielsen Company conducted in collaboration with AbsolutData,
More importantly, Indians spend more time on social media than they do using personal email. The study found that an equal number spend up to an hour on social networking and email. However while just 8% spend between an hour and three hours on personal email, 20% spend the same time on social media sites.
Activities performed on social networking websites in India:
- Check updates: 86%
- Send messages/mail: 82%
- Shareview photographs: 81%
- Get in touch with old friends/colleagues: 79%
- Watch videos/movies or listen to music: 73%
- Keep in touch with family members: 73%
- Use site's applications: 63%
- Participate in discussions on issues/products/services: 58%
- Find out more about prospective spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend: 52%
- Play games: 51%
- Keep track of ex-girlfriend/boyfriend/partner: 46%
- Research future employer or employee: 43%
Social media is also gathering momentum rapidly. Based on the current rate of growth and the intention of online Indians to participate in social media, the study estimates that over the next six months 45,000 online Indians intend to join social networking sites each day.
Nearly 40 million Indians are using online reviews to inform purchase decisions - 67% of Indians who are on the web use online reviews to help them make purchases. As personal opinion gains currency on the social web, online users are seeking various outlets to express themselves, be it blogs or social media sites.
Increasingly, Indians also want brands to communicate with them using social media. 60% Indians who are social media users are open to being approached by brands indicating that social media has the ability to change the dynamic between brands and consumers who are typically time-starved and may consider traditional forms of advertising obtrusive and undesirable. (Nielsen, May 2011)
Social media is a new phenomenon in India but is taking off very fast, according to PhoCusWright:
- Orkut and Facebook: 20 million users
- Orkut and Facebook: 90% of total social media sites
- 70% of internet users visited social Networks sites
- 5% of all users on YouTube are from India (globally ranked fourth)
- Social Media will be mobile based (except perhaps in urban areas)
- The number of mobile social network users in India is expected to reach around 72 million by 2014
- Introduction of 3G, "cheap" smartphones, innovative data tariff pans, reduction in data charges
comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), has released a report on traffic to Social Networking sites in India, revealing that Facebook.com grabbed the number one ranking in the category for the first time in July with 20.9 million visitors, up 179% versus a year ago.
More than 33 million internet users age 15 and older in India visited social networking sites in July, representing 84% of the total internet audience. India now ranks as the seventh largest market worldwide for social networking, after the U.S., China, Germany, Russian Federation, Brazil and the U.K. The total Indian social networking audience grew 43% in the past year, more than tripling the rate of growth of the total internet audience in India.
Facebook.com posted an especially strong month in July, growing 12% versus June, to capture the top spot in the category with 20.9 million visitors. Orkut ranked second with 19.9 million visitors (up 16% vs. year ago), followed by BharatStudent.com with 4.4 million visitors (up 3%). Twitter.com had the highest rate of growth among the top five social networking sites, increasing 239% to 3.3 million visitors. Yahoo! owned two of the top ten social networking sites: Yahoo! Pulse (3.5 million visitors) and Yahoo! Buzz (1.8 million visitors). (comscore.com, August 2010)
Last Updated on Wednesday, 01 February 2012 16:02
