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Our Bureau

Hyderabad , May 18

WITH increasing telecom penetration in India, online commerce presents a great opportunity for economic growth, generation of jobs and international commerce.

The Chief Executive Officer of Sify Ltd., Mr Ramaraj, said as per IDC data, India would lead the Asia Pacific region in e-commerce growth at a compounded annual rate of 83.7 per cent. This is projected to exceed China's growth rate of 81 per cent that is about one-third of the total e-commerce in the APAC region.

Speaking at the Dr T. H. Chowdary — CTMS endowment lecture here, Mr Ramaraj, while citing a book written by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times titled `The World is Flat: a brief history of the 21st Century', said: "The world is flat due to the development of a global Web-enabled platform for multiple forms of sharing knowledge and work, irrespective of time, distance and geography and increasingly, even language."

Telecom reforms in India have ushered in sweeping changes cutting down costs drastically. India has achieved a teledensity of 9.26 per cent against a target of seven per cent as of April 2005 and the telecom subscriber base has crossed the 100-million mark from 30.4 million in 1999-2000.

India now is the fifth largest in Internet usage in the world with 35 million users, the majority of whom access the Internet from cyber cafes. The societal impact has been huge, he explained.

While India has achieved a teledensity of 9.26 per cent, China has 48 per cent by 2004 with 624 million users across fixed and mobile connections. China has over 120 million Internet subscribers, of which, 25 million are broadband subscribers. Even if India were to achieve 250 million connections over the next few years, it would still represent a penetration of a mere 22 per cent of the population. India has a long way to go, he said.

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