20 mn active net users, Google most used brand: Juxt survey

Research firm JuxtConsult’s latest report ‘India Online 2007’ puts Indian internet users in urban areas at 30.32 million in April 2007, a growth of 28 per cent over the previous year. Of these, 83 per cent are ‘regular’ users, who log on to the net at least once a month. JuxtConsult estimates that 20 million users are online once a day in the country.

Apart from surveying 10,000 households for the urban internet population, JuxtConsult contacted 14,200 people online for its ‘Most Preferred Websites’ section. While the findings do not yield any major surprises, it does reflect the success of some new brands in the Indian online space.

Looking at the figures from a usage-to-recall ratio, social networking site Orkut comes up trumps with the highest ratio of 1.76, followed by Gmail with 1.34 and Google at 1.08. Naukri doesn’t fare badly too, with a ratio of 1.0.

JuxtConsult also studied the leading websites in 23 online activities. Yahoo is the preferred e-mail site for 53 per cent of the people surveyed. In fact, it has seen an increase of 16 per cent over last year. Yahoo is also the chosen one for instant messaging, most preferred by 63 per cent of the respondents. Of course, Google is the most preferred site for information search not only in English (75 per cent) but also in other languages (74 per cent).

Naukri tops job search with 37 per cent respondents saying it’s their No.1 job site, but reflecting increased competition in this space, Naukri’s share has declined by 13 per cent over last year. Another booming segment is online travel, and MakeMyTrip and Yatra are neck and neck for preferred usage. While MakeMyTrip stands at 17 per cent, Yatra is at 16 per cent. Yatra, however, has grown in share by 16 per cent while MakeMyTrip has declined by 7 per cent.

For online shopping, Ebay is preferred by 34 per cent of those surveyed. For online share trading, ICICI Direct is the chosen one at 36 per cent while Google and Moneycontrol share the honours for financial news. In matrimonial search, Bharatmatrimony leads with 29 per cent, followed closely by Shaadi at 28 per cent respectively. However, both portals have declined by 4 per cent and 5 per cent respectively over last year.

For mobile content, Yahoo! leads with 14 per cent, followed by Rediff at 12 per cent. With this segment getting competitive as well, both players’ preference share has declined by 8 per cent and 10 per cent respectively. In online gaming, another growing segment, Yahoo leads with 18 per cent of the users preferring its service. New kid on the block Zapak has grown by 17 per cent over last year and is preferred by 17 per cent of those surveyed.

According to Sanjay Tewari, director at JuxtConsult, “In most vertical segments, what we are observing is the emergence of strong specialised brands like Yatra, Magicbricks, Orkut and Zapak.” He adds that companies are aggressively building their online brands.