Digital population in India 2025, by type

The introduction of the government’s Digital India initiative, hand in hand with the increasing internet penetration over the recent years, resulted in the country’s digital population surging to *********** active users as of February 2025. More than half of these were also active social media users. The traffic in the world’s second-largest internet market at this stage was largely dominated by mobile internet users.

The causes and their effects

The arrival of Reliance Jio services in 2007 provided people in the country with schemes and subsidies that were not only attractive but also easily affordable, irrespective of their income levels and socio-economic classes. The impact was almost instant, with over 60 percent of the mobile data traffic coming from Jio services in less than 10 years of its launch.

The future holds greater promise

The number of internet users has increased over the years in rural as well as urban areas. It seemed likely from previous trends that the launch of the Jio fixed line broadband service, called Gigafiber, might aid in the already increasing internet penetration across the country. Along with the demonetization in late 2016, digitization penetrated the country at a staggering rate, nearly ** percent in 2019.