Business Today has conducted a survey on the usage of social networking sites in India.
Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of information and networking services to the private equity and venture capital ecosystem in India. View free samples of Venture Intelligence newsletters and reports. Email the author at arun@ventureintelligence.in
...there are already an estimated 17 million Indians who visit or use social networks. “This number is bound to grow once Orkut starts actively marketing in India. So, India is not yet in the top 10 globally, but should be by next year,” says Mahesh Murthy, Founder, Pinstorm, which is an independent digital marketing firm with seven offices in six countries.
Despite this—and despite the media hype over the social networking phenomenon— ad spends, the major, and often the only, source of revenue for social networking sites, remain small (at an estimated Rs 20 crore) in absolute terms. “Our audit in 2007 showed that the digital marketing spends (Internet+mobile) in 2007 in India was around Rs 450 crore. We think that this market will grow almost 100 per cent this year to Rs 850 crore,” says Murthy.
...“The interesting thing to watch is that almost 57 per cent of online users are part of social networks,” says Leroy Alvares, Country Head, Tribal DDB India, the digital arm of the Mudra Group.
