The number of Indian language Internet users has far surpassed English users, triggering a new phase in Internet penetration. The number now stands at 234 million as against 175 million English users.

“The number of people accessing the Internet in Indian languages is growing at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate of 18 per cent. It expects to touch the 536-million mark in 2021, while the English user base will be at 199 million,” Shalini Girish, Director of Google’s Marketing Solutions, has said.

With the appetite for content in local languages growing significantly, Google is opening up its AdSense and AdWords, its two advertisement products, to more Indian languages. On Wednesday, the firm opened Telugu language support for the two products, allowing content developers and publishers to tap the unfolding opportunity in digital advertisement spends. Earlier, it had announced support to Hindi, Bengali and Tamil languages for the advertisement platforms.

She said the digital advertisement spend in the country is set to grow to $4.4 billion by 2021 from about $2 billion at present. The firm hosted a meeting of bloggers, publishers and content developers as it launched Telugu language support for the advertisement products.

The number of Telugu Internet users is expected to touch 91 million, unfolding huge opportunities for content developers. Terming the non-English market 'massive', Rajan Anandan, Vice-President (South-East Asia and India) of Google, said nine out of every 10 new users coming online are language users. The firm felt that lack of monetisation opportunity had resulted in scarcity of content in local languages.

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