The Rise Of India's Booming Media Business

 

As of 2013, India had more than 94,000 registered newspapers, according to a recent report by KPMG, an audit and advisory firm.

Not only is that an amount that dwarfs the U.S. -- which as of 2011 had feer than 14000 registered newspapers -- but it's also a figure that has nearly doubled from just 10 years prior, when there were about 55,000 registered Indian papers

A combination of factors have gotten India to this place. The first and most obvious is a growing population that's also increasingly literate.

 According to a 2012 Study by UNESCO, India's literacy rate, which was less than 50 % in 1990, is projected to be about 71 % by 2015.

Part of the reason for India's robust print industry is that in many parts of the country, especially the rural regions, Internet connectivity is still a development issue. Only 3 %of Indians say they have Home Internet Access , in large part because of a lack of infrastructure.

That's not to say that Indians aren't online -- just that many of them are getting access through wireless connections and mobile networks. According to the KPMG report, of the 214 million Internet users in India, 130 million, or about 61%, get access through mobile. The report predicts that mobile users will top 350 million by the end of 2018 -- about 71 % of what is by then expected to be a total of 494 million Internet users