India rising
India is now home to the world’s largest population, having overtaken China sometime in May 2023.
Moreover, India’s population continues to increase, whilst that of second-ranked China is actually shrinking.
However, when it comes to internet users, China is still home to the world’s largest connected population – and by a comfortable margin.
Our Digital 2024 Global Overview Report shows that China is now home to almost 1.09 billion internet users, which is almost 340 million more than India’s 751 million.
For perspective, 76.4 percent of China’s total population is now online, compared with just 52.4 percent of the population in India.
And while it’s home to the world’s second largest internet user base, India is also home to the world’s largest “unconnected” population.
Our latest analysis shows that more than 680 million people remain offline across India at the start of 2024, which is more than double the 336 million that remain offline in China.
However, these headline figures do not tell the full story, and our analysis indicates that India will play perhaps the most important role of any country in the next phase of the internet’s growth.
Let’s dive in.
India’s influence will be greater than China’s
Despite being home to roughly 1 in 5 of the world’s internet users, China’s Great Firewall means that the country’s billion-plus netizens do not have access to the same online sites and services as users in the rest of the world.
This system of regulations and technological frameworks was initially designed to ensure the “sovereignty” of the internet in China, and to protect the country’s citizens from “unsavoury” foreign influence.
However, its impact works both ways, and one of the consequences of the Great Firewall is that the rest of the world rarely gets to interact with China’s citizens online.
Of course, China still has an important influence on how people in other countries use the internet, especially when we consider the global rise of platforms like TikTok and Kwai.
But because they don’t use the same services and platforms, people in other countries rarely hear the opinions of everyday Chinese people.
Similarly, unless they actively seek it out, people outside of China are rarely exposed to the content that Chinese people share on platforms like Weibo and Weixin (which is known as WeChat outside of China).
But India’s internet users are not subject to these same restrictions.
Yes, India’s government blocks access to a number of Chinese services and digital platforms – most notably TikTok – but for the most part, India’s internet users are able to interact with users in other countries without impediment, and they’re also able to access the majority of Western platforms and content.
Indeed, India now tops the user rankings of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, and Indian traffic has a meaningful impact on global website rankings, too.
India’s influence is already visible
But the country’s “freedom of online movement” may have even more profound implications as India’s connected population grows.
Despite the country’s relatively low levels of internet adoption, India’s influence on the global internet is already apparent.
Trending up
For example, Google Trends reports that “Cricbuzz” was one of the top 20 Google searches around the world in 2023.
Cricket is popular elsewhere of course, but Cricbuzz is primarily an Indian service for Indian cricket fans.
Closer examination of the top queries within India show that Cricbuzz only ranked second at a local level in 2023 though, with “satta” topping the list of queries entered into Google by users in India last year.
Interestingly, satta only just missed the global top 20 this year, ranking 21st at a worldwide level.
However, we regularly see this search term appear in Google Trends’ ranking of the world’s top 20 web queries.
As with cricket, satta gambling isn’t unique to India, but – despite being illegal in the country – Google Trends data shows that the vast majority of search activity relating to this query originates from within India.
Similarly, Google Trends’s latest ranking of global YouTube searches reveals just how much appetite there is for Indian content, with searches for “Hindi movie” ranking 15th at a worldwide level for 2023 as a whole.
Meanwhile, “gana” ranks even higher, placing 9th at a worldwide level in 2023.
Admittedly, there may be a few different meanings for this particular query around the world, but most of the top YouTube search results for “gana” relate to Indian music.
It’s all appening
Looking beyond search terms, data.ai reports that Flipkart is now the world’s third most popular online shopping app, even though 99.7 percent of the app’s active users are based in India.
Meanwhile, data.ai intelligence reveals that Battlegrounds Mobile India was 1 of the top 5 mobile gaming apps around the world in 2023 by total time spent, offering a valuable insight into the sheer size of India’s mobile gaming opportunity.
And India’s renowned love affair with music is evident in another of data.ai’s datasets too, with JioSaavn and Wynk both ranking in the world’s top 10 music apps by monthly active users.
And Indians are making their presence felt on the world’s largest music platform too.
Two prominent Indian musicians – Arijit Singh, and Pritam – both featured in Spotify’s list of the 40 most-streamed artists on the platform during 2023.
Turning our attention to TV and movies, data.ai’s analysis reveals that Hotstar – Disney’s specially tailored “Disney+” offering for the Indian market – ranked fourth amongst the world’s video entertainment apps by monthly active users, just behind Netflix’s app.
And of particular note here is the fact that Hotstar saw significantly more users than the primary Disney+ app at a worldwide level.
However, even more impressive is the fact that the world’s Android users spent more time watching content in the Hotstar mobile app than they did in the Netflix mobile app.
And this simple ranking doesn’t tell the whole story, either.
In fact, across the last three months of 2023, Hotstar accounted for more global time on Android mobile devices than Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, and HBO… combined.
And the app is still gaining momentum too, with Hotstar topping data.ai’s global app growth charts across active users, total time spent, and downloads in the last three months of 2023.
JioCinema also ranked in the top 10 video entertainment apps, both by active users and by total time spent.
Stream team
Talking of streaming platforms, we’re increasingly seeing content in “Indian languages” such as Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu appear in Netflix’s global rankings too.
Indian movies and TV shows are yet to gain the same levels of international momentum that Korean content has seen in recent years, but – given the size of India’s domestic market – it seems likely that Indian content will continue to rise up the global rankings, especially as the country’s local user base expands.
And it’s particularly interesting to note that India already ranks highly in terms of streaming’s share of total daily TV time.
So, as more and more Indians become connected, we can expect to see India’s role in the global streaming market grow too.
YouTube
India’s netizens are also particularly avid users of YouTube, as evidenced by our latest global ranking of the platform’s top channels.
T-Series tops the global ranking, with the Indian music label and movie studio claiming more than a quarter of a billion YouTube subscribers.
Meanwhile, Sony Entertainment Television (SET) India ranks fourth at a worldwide level, with the platform attracting 167 million subscribers – just behind third-placed Cocomelon’s 170 million.
Meanwhile, Zee Music Company, Sony SAB, Zee TV, and Colors TV all rank in the top 20, meaning that Indian channels account for more than a quarter of this cohort (6 out of 20).
But Indian channels fare even better when we explore the rankings by total views.
India accounts for five of the top 10 channels in this list, with the combined counts of these five channels amounting to more than 650 billion views.
Wiki-wow
India’s netizens also played an outsized role in shaping the ranking of the most viewed articles on Wikipedia last year, with the popularity of four of the top ten pages largely influenced by Indian interests and passions.
As we noted above, cricket is popular across other countries too, but – given the sheer size of the country’s online population – it’s likely that Indian users drove a significant share of traffic to the “2023 Cricket World Cup” and “Cricket World Cup” articles.
This ranking also supports the hypothesis that Indian movies and TV content are gaining greater global visibility, with articles relating to two Indian films – “Jawan” and “Pathaan” – both ranking in the Wikipedia top 20.
But perhaps the most salient finding in these Wikipedia rankings is the fact that the article on India itself ranks in the global top 20.
Next, the world
However, the most striking finding coming out of this data is that the success of almost all of these entities is largely driven by the domestic Indian market.
And when we do see interest coming from other countries, these countries tend to have a sizeable expat Indian community, such as Gulf Cooperation Council nations.
But there’s every chance that this will change in the second half of this decade.
Just under half of India’s population is yet to come online, which means that – so far – we’ve only seen half of the country’s potential to feed and influence global digital culture.
Moreover, data from GWI shows that Indians are significantly more likely to post their own content and opinions to social media compared with the global average.
So, in addition to their actual consumption activities influencing global content rankings and algorithms, we can expect Indian audiences to actively share their tips and recommendations with the rest of the world too.
Dig deeper
If you’d like to learn more about the latest digital behaviours and trends in India, dig into our complete collection of local country reports by clicking here.
Disclosure: Simon Kemp is a brand ambassador for both GWI and data.ai.
Click here to see all of Simon’s articles, read his bio, and connect with him on social media.