India internet users: India to cross 900 million internet users this year: IAMAI report

India will have more than 900 million internet users in 2025, with a majority coming from rural areas of the country, a report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and research firm Kantar said Thursday.

However, the growth rate of internet users has slowed down since 2021. In 2024, the growth in number of internet users in India was 10%, compared to 11% in 2023, and 14% in 2022.

As of 2024 end, the country had 886 million internet users, representing a 58% penetration. In 2021, rural India surpassed urban India in terms of internet users and the number in the rural regions has been growing rapidly since then.

In 2024, 55% of India’s internet users were from rural India.

The report also said that users are spending an average of 90 minutes daily accessing the internet. However, in this case, urban users, at 94 minutes every day, are spending relatively higher time as compared to rural users, who are spending 89 minutes accessing the internet daily.

Top activities on the internet

Accessing over-the-top (OTT) video and audio streaming apps has become the top use case in India for internet users surpassing digital communication (chats, emails, messages) and social media.In 2024, 732 million users used OTT apps with 54% of these coming from rural areas, and only 15% from top nine cities of the country.

Similarly, digital commerce saw 480 million users last year, and 40% of this coming from rural regions. Only 21% of this base came from top nine cities.

The trends were similar across use cases such as online gaming, digital payments and social media.