India’s internet user base crosses 950M in 2025: IAMAI report

India’s internet user base crossed 950 million in 2025, driven largely by rapid growth in rural connectivity, rising short-video consumption, and increasing adoption of AI, according to a report released by IAMAI on Thursday.

The report also revealed that rural India accounts for 57% of India’s active internet users, i.e, approximately 548 million active users.

The ‘Internet in India Report 2025,’ jointly prepared by Internet and Mobile Association of India and KANTAR, which highlights these trends, was released at the India Digital Summit in the presence of Manjula N, Secretary to the Government, Department of Electronics, IT/BT and Science & Technology, Government of Karnataka.

According to the report, India now has 958 million Active Internet Users (AIU), marking an approximate 8% year‑on‑year growth, reinforcing India’s position as one of the world’s largest and fastest‑evolving digital markets.

It also reveals that 44% of users have engaged with AI‑enabled features such as voice search, image‑based search, chatbots, and AI filters.

“This growth of internet users continues to be led decisively by rural India, which is now home to approximately 548 million active internet users,” the report said.

Rural regions now account for over 57% of India’s active internet users and are growing at nearly four times the pace of urban India, signalling a structural shift in where and how digital adoption is expanding, it added.

The report highlighted that artificial intelligence has reached mass adoption in India, with 44% of users engaging with AI-enabled features such as voice search, image-based search, chatbots, and AI filters.

“Usage is highest among younger audiences, with 57% of users aged 15-24 years and 52% of those aged 25-44 years reporting AI usage in the past year,” it added.

The report further revealed that short-video consumption has emerged as a key growth driver within this expanding user base.

It noted that in 2025, 588 million (61%) internet users consumed short-video content, with rural users marginally outnumbering urban users. Adoption is strongest among younger audiences, cementing their role as a key driver of digital engagement.

In the statement, citing the report, IAMAI said that quick commerce is leading a fundamental shift in how Indians shop online, with social commerce close behind, as the e‑commerce ecosystem expands beyond traditional online marketplaces.

Among urban users, 230 million people (56% of the urban active internet base) shopped online in the past year, with quick commerce and social commerce gaining prominence alongside established marketplaces, it added.

IAMAI also noted that multi-device usage is on the rise, with India now having 193 million multi-device internet users, representing 20% of all active internet users, up from 165 million in 2024.

“Urban adoption stands at 31%, while rural India is catching up at 12%. Shared device usage continues to be a key enabler of digital access: 18% of internet users go online through someone else’s mobile device, and nearly 80% of these users are based in rural areas,” the report stated.

It also revealed that despite strong momentum, 38% of India’s population—about 579 million people—remains non-active internet users.

“However, this proportion has been steadily declining year after year, signalling substantial headroom for the continued expansion of India’s digital economy,” it said.

The 2025 edition of the Internet in India report is based on a sample of nearly 100,000 consumers across more than 400 towns and over 1,000 villages, it added.

India’s surge in online users is the result of several structural forces that have been building for the better part of the last decade: large-scale investments in mobile broadband, the availability of low-cost smartphones and extremely affordable data plans from competitive telecom operators, government digital-inclusion initiatives, and a wave of locally tailored content and apps (especially in regional languages).

Together these factors have pushed internet access beyond cities into smaller towns and villages, while platform innovations — notably short-video formats, integrated digital payments, and increasingly embedded AI features — have made smartphones more useful and habitual for a wider cross-section of the population.

The rapid expansion brings both opportunity and urgency. For businesses and policymakers it creates a vast new consumer base and a rationale to rethink services for low-bandwidth, shared-device, and vernacular contexts; for regulators and civil-society actors it heightens the need to address digital literacy, privacy and safety, affordable device access, and the remaining structural barriers that keep roughly a third of the population offline.

(With inputs from PTI)