Regular Indian internet urban users grew 19% in 2008 to reach 30 million ‘regular’ users and a total of 35 million. Regular is defined as users who access the internet atleast once a month. Out of the total., 30 million are urban and 5 million are reported as rural. This is the first year the study has mapped rural users which includes internet accessed from mobile phones, data cards and cyber cafes. Out of these, 25 million are pegged as ‘daily’ users with 77% of online users belonging to the 19 to 35 age group. Interestingly only 28% of internet users prefer English as the language of reading with users of vernacular language websites up 34% from 12% year-on-year. A quick summary of the trends below as well as answers to a few questions we asked JuxtConsult co-founder Mrutyunjay Mishra on the study.

—Home is the most preferred place of access for 41% of users
—81% user social media platforms (Note: The definition of social media platforms is very wide including chatting, forums, commenting on blogs, etc…)
—Top 5 activities: Emailing (91%), Job Search (72%), Messaging (70%), Reading News (63%) and Sports (57%).
—Top of mind recall and % used led by Google (NSDQ: GOOG) followed by Yahoo (NSDQ: YHOO), Rediff (NSDQ: REDF), Orkut and Gmail.
—Only 8 Indian websites lead their category amongst 26 in the Most Popular websites for online activities with Naukri (Job Search), Yatra(Online Travel), Zapak (Games), Moneycontrol (Financial News), Icicidirect (Online share trading), Raaga (Music), Bharatmatrimoney (Matrimony) and Rediff (Buy/rent movie cd). Please note the definition of Most Popular Websites is not based on page views, time spent or revenues earned but rather on what is the most preferred/used website by the user in the survey. A few problems here, the most preferred website might not be the most used. In case of travel for eg, I prefer using Cleartrip to search for tickets but book via Makemytrip. Thus, my preference is starkly different from what I actually used. Again, there is significant overlap in categories with no consistency in the way they have been sub-categorized. Orkut has been listed under Professional Networking, Social Networking as well as Friendship/Dating, the latter essentially being a subset of Social Networking. However, in the case of Online Shopping (non-travel) Ebay gets listed, but Rediff gets a mention under another subset of Online Shopping (buy/rent movie cds). 

The offline survey sampled 12,500 households in 40 cities of all population sizes, and over 4,000 households in 160 villages. The internet usage dynamics, behavior and website preferences were captured through a large scale ‘online survey’ with over 15,000 internet users in April 2008. More details in the QnA after the jump

CS: What is the definition of occasional internet user definition

MM: Regular Internet User internationally is “someone who access Internet at least once a month”, any one who is not a regular Internet user is occasional (using less than once a month).

CS: Are all your cities, towns and villages classification based on Census metrics or JuxtConsult’s own definition?

MM: Exact same as Indian Census Classification - Urban: Towns with more than 5000 population (5K-20K polpulation, 20K-50K, 50K-1Lakh, 1L-5L, 5L-10L, 10L-30L, 30L-50L and 50 Lakh above populations towns). Rural: Any place with less than 5000 population is rural

In fact in our online questionnaire we provide drop down options to select “State - District - Town/Subdivision/Tahsil” - and type the Village name in a text box, this list is exactly same as what is used in Indian Census

CS:  Does this data include internet access via mobile?

MM: It does, we have asked about all kind of Internet access points, “Home”, “Place of work (office / school / college)”, “Cyber cafe”, In transit (while on the move, “Mobile Phones”, “Data Cards”) (currently just 6% of Internet users), “Choupal/Gram Panchayat” etc. etc.

CS: What about online trading as percentage of what users do online. Specifically, stocks, bank transfers (excluding online shopping)?

MM: 11% of all regular Internet Users are currently claim trading online.

CS: Online Travel - Yatra? Could you specify details for arriving at this conclusion?

MM: We check for “most preferred”/“most used” website for online travel solutions, Yatra is mentioned as the most preferred website. In a duplicated usage market (same user using MMT, Yatra & Cleartrip) what matters is the most preferred one. We don’t measure page views, time spent or revenues earned. In a survey method it is only possible to capture the most preferred/used website from a user.