India: Huge Market, Slow Internet

One major challenge to social media marketers hoping to gain an Indian audience is the fact that internet connections are very slow.

In the United States, the average internet connection is 3.9 MB per second. In India, it is 772 KB per second.

As anyone who has used the internet in India knows, many flash-rich web 2.0 pages just won't load in an acceptable amount of time.

Moreover, an Indian internet user is far less likely to own a computer than his or her American counterpart. Since the average salary is less than $500 per year, purchasing a computer is nearly impossible for most Indian citizens.

This means that most Indian internet users are accessing the web on a shared computer. Often, this is in an internet cafe setting that charges by the hour. Therefore, it is not practical for an Indian web surfer to spend a lot of time letting a page load.

Social media marketers focusing on the subcontinent need to develop simple HTML alternatives that load quickly and reliably.