Talkwalker Blog

Social media statistics in India

Written by Talkwalker | November 2, 2021



  • India currently has a population of 1,369,566,180 -  this is 17.1% of the world’s total population
  • Median age is 27.1 years - it’s a young country
  • Life expectancy is 69 years

Age distribution

Internet penetration stands at 41% today but it’s surprising to see that the country’s average age (27.1 years) is more or less reflected on social media as well. 52.3% of social media results come from millennials.

28.4% of social media conversations are from Gen Z and 15.1% from those aged 35-44. It’s interesting to see that the older generations are also catching on.

Social media statistics in India

Internet penetration is low in India - yet, in December 2018, 566 million users were online in India. Out of this - 493 million are regular users of the internet. (source:livemint). 

  • At the end of 2018, the number of social media users in India stood at 326.1 million. (statista)

  • At the end of 2019, this number has been estimated to grow to 351.4 million.

  • On average, Indian users spend 2.4 hours on social media a day (slightly below the global average of 2.5 hours a day). (Source: The Hindu)

  • 290 million active social media users in India access social networks through their mobile devices. (Source: Hootsuite - We Are Social report)

  • 86% of the total number of social media users engage in some form of activity on their social channels (Source: Hootsuit e- We Are Social report)

  • 97% of Indians who are connected to the internet watch videos online.

  • Facebook is the most popular social network in India : Source: Social Samosa

Facebook Stats in India

  • Facebook has 241 million active users in India - that’s the highest they have in any country.

(Source: Investopedia)

  • Facebook has the younger generation hooked! The largest user group by age on Facebook is 18-24 years, with a whopping 97.2 million users.

  • Average CPC rates for Facebook India is Rs. 23-24.

  • In terms of number of users per city, Mumbai has the highest number of Facebook users, followed by Delhi and Bengaluru.

  • The most popular Facebook page in India belongs to Narendra Modi - it’s also one of the fastest growing Facebook pages in India. (Socialbakers)

  • 52% of Indians use Facebook as a source of news. (Reuters)

Top Facebook influencers in India (Wonderslist)

  1. Narendra Modi

  2. Priyanka Chopra

  3. Virat Kohli

  4. Salman Khan

  5. Deepika Padukone

  6. Amitabh Bachchan

  7. Yo! Yo! Honey Singh

  8. Shah Rukh Khan

  9. Sachin Tendulkar

  10. Shreya Ghoshal

Instagram stats

  • There are 69 million people on Instagram in India as of November 2018. 

  • People between the ages of 18-24 are the largest age group for Instagram, which shows that it really is a platform for young consumers - if you want to reach your younger audiences, Instagram is your go-to tool.

  • There is over a 5.6% growth for Instagram reach every quarter.

  • Instagram is the 8th most used mobile app in India as per Hootsuite’s annual report.

  • India has the 3rd largest number of fake followers on Instagram after the US and Brazil. This is the dark side of Instagram.

Top Instagram influencers in India

  1. Priyanka Chopra

  2. Virat Kohli

  3. Narendra Modi

  4. Deepika Padukone

  5. Alia Bhat

  6. Shraddha Kapoor

  7. Katrina Kaif

  8. Akshay Kumar

  9. Jacqueline Fernandez

  10. Anushka Sharma

Twitter statistics

  • India has 7.75 million users on Twitter. (Source: statista)

  • 18% of social media users in India look at Twitter as a source of news. (Source: Reuters)

  • The most followed person on Twitter is PM Narendra Modi with 50.2 million followers.

  • Twitter usage unlike other platforms is actually decreasing = 2.2% per quarter (Source: Digital 2019 report from Hootsuite)

  • Gender inequality is really high on Twitter with 16% of the audience being female and 84% of the audience being male. 

  • The most common type of Twitter interaction is likes with 83% of the engagement coming from likes, followed by retweets, 9% engagement and then Replies 8% engagement. (Source: Socialbakers)

  •  Fastest growing Twitter Profile in India (Aug 2019): Tata Docomo. (Source: Socialbakers)

Top Twitter influencers in India (engagement)

  1. Narendra Modi

  2. BJP

  3. ANI

  4. Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga 

  5. Virat Kohli 

  6. Rahul Gandhi

  7. Kapil Mishra

  8. Sachin Tendulkar

  9. BCCI

  10. Amit Shah

Snapchat statistics

  1. 15.1 million people use Snapchat daily as per Statista.

  2. Snapchat usage is increasing in India. There has been a 40% increase in the number of daily users in India from Q2 2018 to Q2 2019.

  3. Snapchat supports four Indian languages - Hindi, Marathi, Punjabi and Gujarati

  4. According to The Next Web, Snapchat grew 75% year on year in 2018 , with 55% of the audience being women, which makes it one of the extremely rare platforms with a female majority.

LinkedIn statistics

  1. India is the second largest market for LinkedIn with 53 million active users.

  2. 7.4% of LinkedIn traffic is from India. (Business of apps)

  3. Slideshare (owned by LinkedIn) is one of the top 100 websites in India with a ranking of 75. (Alexa) (Businessofapps)

  4. 22% of influencers from India identify LinkedIn as a very important platform for Influencer marketing.

  5. LinkedIn posted an INR 38 crore profit in India with an increase in net profit from 2017 to 2018 by 26%. (Economic times)

Top hashtags in India

  1. #Viswasam

  2. #BTS

  3. #HappyBirthdayPawanKalyan

  4. #Sarkar

  5. #Bigil

  6. #Thala

  7. #TVPersonality2018

  8. #Thalapathy

  9. #HappyBirthdaySSMB

  10. #Ajith

 

Top most visited Websites in India

Most visited websites according to SimilarWeb.

1. Google.com

2. Facebook.com

3. Youtube.com

4. Xvideos2.com

5. Amazon.in

Most visited websites according to Alexa

1. Google.com

2. YouTube.com

3. Google.co.in

4. Amazon.in

5. Facebook.com

Though both lists are different, it is clear to see that Google is the dominant player in both cases.

What were the most searched queries in 2018?

As per Google:

  1. Video

  2. Download 

  3. Song

  4. India

  5. YouTube

As per YouTube

  1. Song

  2. Movie

  3. Songs

  4. Video

  5. Movies

Hope you enjoyed that report of the top social media statistics in India and find it useful!