Number of internet users in India 2017-2021, by region
India’s digital adoption has been driven by the rural heartland of the country, registering a high growth of internet users compared to their urban counterparts. In 2021, there were 352 million internet users in rural India compared to 294 million urban internet users.
Bridging the internet gap
This jump in rural internet penetration was largely owing to the increased availability of bandwidth, cheap data plans and various government initiatives under the Digital India campaign. As of 2019, over 118 thousand village and small-town councils, called Gram Panchayats, were equipped with internet access across India. Of these, Uttar Pradesh had the maximum connectivity in its rural areas with over 28 thousand internet equipped gram panchayats. These factors also led to an overall spike in the internet penetration rates across the country. From just over 27 percent internet penetration rate in 2015, India reached almost 49 percent by 2019.
A perspective on the numbers
Although these figures seem relatively low, it indicated that about 639 million would be internet users by December 2020. This ranked India second in terms of active internet users across the world that same year.
Bridging the internet gap
This jump in rural internet penetration was largely owing to the increased availability of bandwidth, cheap data plans and various government initiatives under the Digital India campaign. As of 2019, over 118 thousand village and small-town councils, called Gram Panchayats, were equipped with internet access across India. Of these, Uttar Pradesh had the maximum connectivity in its rural areas with over 28 thousand internet equipped gram panchayats. These factors also led to an overall spike in the internet penetration rates across the country. From just over 27 percent internet penetration rate in 2015, India reached almost 49 percent by 2019.
A perspective on the numbers
Although these figures seem relatively low, it indicated that about 639 million would be internet users by December 2020. This ranked India second in terms of active internet users across the world that same year.
