Context: Recently, Kantar, the world’s leading data, insights and consulting company released its ICUBE 2019 report on digital adoption and usage trends in India.
Key Points

• The annual tracking study; considered to be the currency for digital adoption in the country, gauges the changing digital ecosystem in India, measuring Internet usage by demographic, activity and device segments.
• The report projects 11% growth for 2020; estimates 639 million monthly active Internet users.
• All monthly active Internet users use a mobile phone as one of the devices to access the Internet.
• Estimated at 574 million, the number of monthly active Internet users have registered an annual growth of 24% indicating an overall penetration of 41%.
• About 84% of users access the Internet for entertainment purposes.
• At 38%, school-going children segment in the age group of 15 years or below has shown a promising growth on internet usage.
• Access to information and education, social media, gaming and entertainment, especially, Sports, are driving the adoption.
• Content is the king and is driving the surge in daily internet usage.
• India’s digital revolution continues to be propelled by the rural masses — Rural India registered a 45% growth in the monthly active internet users in 2019. It is now estimated that there are 264 million internet users in rural India, and this is expected to reach 304 million in 2020.

Factors responsible for this growth are as follows

• The convenience of content availability across devices and on the go low-cost Internet service resulted in a significant growth in the entertainment consumption in the last year. This is expected to continue in 2020 too, especially in view of the lockdown.
• Local language and video are the underlying factors for the internet boom in rural.
• Children and housewives will be the new Internet adopters in the next year or two. Most of these users already have Internet at home, and it will be more about breaking the mindset barriers to access the web.
• Video, Voice and Vernacular (3 Vs) will be significant usage factors for the Internet users. These will drive higher engagement and frequency of usage, thereby, helping the users mature in their Internet journey.
• IOT and Smart Devices will make the internet as much a household phenomenon as it is an individual phenomenon.