China Vs India – Digital Online Market

China is way ahead in the online market compared to India. Undeterred by China's restrictions, Yahoo, which owns the world's most-visited Web portal, invested $120 million in a Chinese search engine in 2003. Last year it started an auction site in China, where total online revenue hit $1.1 billion. India, an English-speaking democracy that allows freer flow of information, had online revenue of just $93 million. It does seem ironic that India, with its democratic government and free press, is so far behind China in developing its Internet market," says David Wolf, managing director of Wolf Group Asia, a Beijing-based regional consulting firm. The simple reason is that China has the infrastructure and India doesn't. The number of Web users in China has expanded sevenfold in eight years to 94 million. India, whose population of 1.1 billion is close to China's, has 24 million Internet users. Yahoo employs 600 people in China, 10 times as many as in India. The Chinese government has paved the way for Internet growth by investing $138 billion in telecommunications networks in the past five years. China's online revenue - which includes sales from advertising and from Internet gaming and wireless services - grew 35 percent last year to $1.1 billion and is expected to rise 30 percent in 2005.China is a giant market that's growing quickly. There's a lot more demand that can be satisfied. By contrast, India - generated about $93 million in online revenue last year, MindShare estimates. India's 24 million Internet users, are about a quarter of China's 94 million Web surfers. The teledensity is 1: 1.19 in china to 1:11 in India. Venture-capital firms made $177 million in Internet-related investments in China in 2003 and 2004, four times more than the $44 million India attracted.