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Just who’s reading Hindi online
I manage the Jagran.Com portal, and let me put in my marketing plug right up front – Jagran.Com is the #1 Language Portal in India.
When I meet people whether in the industry, friends from abroad or even friends from India (let me clarify that most of the people in my circle are from the US or educated from English medium schools) – the first question that they ask me – ” Kai kaun Hindi parta hai – vo bhi online”. . are shocked when I tell them that Jagran.Com gets more than 1.5 Million, or 15 lakh, unique visitors each month. And each of these visitors reads more than 40 -50 pages on average during the month. Jagran.Com is one of the more sticky sites on the web. They then stare at me as if I am making all these statistics up.
They continue with the look of disbelief and then suddenly exclaim that these net users most be 2nd tiers towns and cities. How I wish that the internet penetration had become so pervasive in every town in India that that would be the case. The readership profile of Jagran.Com is ~15 – 20% NRI’s and 80% from India. In India we find most of our traffic comes from NCR (~40%), followed by Maharastra (~10%). We are seeing an uptick from smaller towns and states, although I wish that it would be a lot faster.
With over 400M Hindi Speakers in India – what intrigues me the most is that I constantly get asked this question. Why does everyone always assume that if you are on the web – it must the English Web. Why does everyone forget the Top 7 read papers in India – are still NON-ENGLISH and the top TV programs/channel are also not in English. Why do we apply a different logic to the WEB? Also if we look at countries with a national language other than English – the top sites are in the local languages. So why are we so shocked when our own Indian languages are finding their audiences online. Would love to hear your views on this!
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