December 19th, 2008
Rediff CEO Ajit Balakrishnan at Internet Governance Forum: Local Languages Will Not Drive the Next Billion Internet Users
Welcome back to Gauravonomics Blog! Subscribe to my feed now and you'll never miss a single post!
(Cross-posted at my fellowship blog.)
At the Internet Governance Forum at Hyderabad, during a panel on Reaching the Next Billion, Rediff CEO Ajit Balakrishnan made some interesting comments (via Nikhil Pahwa) –
If the world is looking to increase Internet users by a billion, India has to contribute at least 250 million… India’s user base right now is roughly 40 million. So it’s a mega challenge to take it from where we are now at 40 million to get to 250 million.
We have had e-mail operating in 11 languages, but virtually 99% of users prefer to use it in English. In India, there is a set of issues, because practically all of the 300 million young people who aspire to something in this country aspire to learn English. English is an aspirational language. Consequently, there is very little interest in accessing the Internet in any other language than that.
