Trak.in wonders how believable are the growth claims of Indian startups given the dismal spread of internet usage in the country:

Prima facie, the growth may look good, but honestly speaking even these ‘active’ 32 million Indian internet users comprise of 90% dial-up users (non-broadband users). This essentially means that there are only 3 million users who actually use internet regularly for activities other than email and instant messaging.

If you look at Internet penetration at all India level, it is next to negligible. In a country where we have population of 105 billion only 0.3% have used internet and only 0.03% have broadband connections. That is probably the lowest Internet penetration in the world. Even countries like Algeria (7.3), Zambia (4.4) and Azerbaijan (9.8%) have much higher penetration than India.

Another question is, with the total user base of 3 million broadband users how can hordes of India centric online startups be successful?