80 Crore Indians Will Have Internet On Their Phones In 4 Years, Consuming Record Amount Of Data

Ever since the entry of Jio caused an upheaval in mobile Internet, the number of Internet users has been steadily going up.

Since it's cheaper all around, more people are now coming online for the first time. And we could be close to a billion Internet users in a few years.

According to new data from the McKinsey Global Institute, India's Internet users could swell by about 40 percent in the next few years. It indicates we could hit 750-800 million mobile Internet users by 2023.

Part of the trigger for this will be the country's number of smartphones doubling to about 700 million in that time. The report also expects core digital sectors to double to between $355-435 billion in the next seven years.

Since the entry of Reliance Jio, the report indicates mobile consumption per user in India has gone up by about 150 percent. Basically, because it's so much cheaper, we're buying and using a lot more data.

At last count in 2018, we had 560 million internet subscribers, second only to China.

Right now, Indians use about 8.3GB of data each month on average, compared to the 5.5GB average for mobile users in China. We've also downloaded more apps in 2018, about 12.3 billion of them.

The report says Indians spend about 17 hours on social media platforms each week on average, more so than those in the US and China. But it's not just fun and games, we're also using the Internet for important stuff. The number of Indians with at least one financial account with digital banking active has more than doubled to 80 percent in the past eight years.

And despite all of this, the report indicates India can grow even further. Apparently about 90 percent of all retail transactions in India by volume are still made with cash. That means there's that much room for digital transactions to grow as people take to running all their errands online.