Since 2005 the number of paid-for Indian daily newspaper titles has surged by 44% to 2,700, according to the World Association of Newspapers. That gives India more paid-for newspapers than any other country. One reason why the internet has not yet started destroying Indian newspapers is that only 7% of Indians surf the web regularly. Granted, only 65% of Indian adults can read—a pitiful figure. But it is nearly twice what it was three decades ago. The Times of India, whose circulation of 4m makes it the world’s biggest English-language newspaper, charges roughly ten times more than regional dailies do. The circulation of Hindi papers rose from less than 8m in the early 1990s to more than 25m last year.
The Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, a trade body, and KPMG, a consultancy, predict that in the next four years the newspaper industry’s revenues will grow by 9% a year, to $5.9 billion. One day, the internet will start to hurt print. Around 16m Indians visited online news sites in October last year, up by 37% from the previous October.
Read more at The Economist
