PC and Net Shopping Penetration in India

There were two articles in last 2 days of Economic Times showing increased penetration of PCs in India
a) One PC for every 50 Indians (13 June, 2007)
b) Net Shoppers click nonstop (14 June, 2007)

IDC has called this as a watershed era in the history of Indian PC market and I tend to agree with that statement. In terms of pure numbers, we may still be lacking wrt western nations and there are still ways to go before everyone in India has access to a PC, it still is a great achievement considering Indian population and demographic spread. Around 21.6 million Indians have access to internet and 43% of them do some form of online shopping, spending an average of Rs 2,100 annually. While some call that to be a low number, it still is a good start.

Part of the credit in my mind goes to surprisingly Indian bureaucratic system … since they were directly responsible for introducing computers in the school education system very early on. I remember that it was back in 1985 that the first batch of Class XI science students were given the option of choosing ‘Computers’ as a subject, similar to Physics, Chemistry etc. I was part of the 2nd batch and had computers as a subject in class XI and XII. If you think about, if the batch was starting in 1985, all the pre-planning, approval from different regulatory bodies, getting books published, training teachers, setting up computer labs etc. has to be done atleast 2-3 years before that, so in very early 1980s….25+ years ago, much before the era of liberalization, new economy, internet. And we all are reaping the benefits of those decisions….Hats off to the Indian bureaucrats of that time who have paved for the progress of this country.

Going ahead, there needs to be improvement in both – increased users and usage per user. Broadband connection in India is still not strong enough and almost 1 out of 3 times, there is an issue with opening a website. ISPs need to take broadband connectivity to the next level.

Another interesting stat is that roughly 1.5 million Indians have their own blog …including me