Last year, we carried an article covering the near-flat growth rate of content portals in India and it’s the time of the year, when we revisit the same stats for 2010 [2010 recap].
What has significantly changed in 2010? Apparently, nothing!
Take a look at the Comscore (* ) data (India traffic/Unique Users only) – the only portal which has shown some decent sign of growth is Yahoo, while Rediff, HindustanTimes.com etc seems to have settled down at their respective levels.
That brings us to a core question – is there a ceiling to content business in India? (if yes, then Yahoo seems to be almost there?)
If no, then are these content players just not innovating enough?
I’d like to believe the latter, as most of these companies do not offer any fresh perspective or insight (most of the content sites in India are news aggregators).
Of course, the traffic is a function of Internet penetration in India and consumption habits, but the reality of the matter is that very few content sites in India offer compelling content (i.e. beyond bikini pictures).
What’s your take on the content business in India? Do we lack content creators? With the advent of new media, do you feel the winds of change?
* Please note: One might say that comscore data for India is not reliable (as Comscore doesn’t track cybercafe data), I’d argue that content sites like these are mainly visited by professionals during office hours and data is representative of the reality (and should be used for guesstimating relative traffic).
