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This growth in traffic has been supported by rising internet penetration, higher smartphone adoption, and the growing popularity of OTT platforms, digital payments, and e-commerce.

In addition, regulatory measures such as the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, and guidelines from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) have further supported demand by encouraging data localisation.

Another major factor that will drive demand is AI adoption.

A change of guard is underway in Indian venture capital, as seasoned general partners (GPs) exit marquee funds to launch leaner, nimbler firms, ushering a generational churn in early-stage investing. The push by senior partners to go solo comes amid a broader reset in venture investing. Large exits have been sparse, and the artificial intelligence frenzy that has swept global markets has largely eluded India, leaving tech-focussed VCs in a state of uncertainty.

Sandhya Devanathan, who now heads Meta’s India and Southeast Asia region, said the region constitutes a large chunk of users for Meta platforms and demonstrated early successes even before the company started monetising WhatsApp.

India's pursuit of faster WiFi speeds faces delays as Department of Telecommunications (DoT) postpones the notification of rules for delicensing the lower 6 GHz spectrum band. This decision impacts the deployment of WiFi 6E and 7, promising tenfold speed increases.

Surveying more than 3,500 respondents across 33 cities, the study reveals that Reels now leads the short-form video space by a significant margin. A striking 92% of users indicated a preference for Reels over other formats, while 95% reported watching it daily—outpacing competing platforms by at least 12 percentage points.

Venture capital firm Accel is poised to realise one of India’s largest startup returns as home services platform Urban Company’s initial public offering (IPO) this week could deliver the investor nearly ₹1500 crore from a ₹ 70 crore bet made a decade ago.

 
The Gurugram-based firm’s 145.2 million shares, acquired at an average price of ₹3.77 each starting in 2015, are valued at approximately ₹1,500 crore at Urban Company’s IPO price band of ₹98-103 per share-- representing a 28.5-fold return.

Marketplace services more than doubled to Rs 7,751 crore from Rs 3,734 crore, while advertising rose 27% to Rs 6,317 crore. Logistics revenue fell sharply to Rs 4,224 crore from Rs 6,838 crore, signalling a pullback from third-party fulfillment.

Employee benefit costs dropped to Rs 4,748 crore from Rs 5,178 crore, depreciation and amortization eased to Rs 256 crore, and finance costs were flat at Rs 162 crore. Other expenses, including platform, logistics and marketing, rose to Rs 17,145 crore from Rs 14,958 crore. The company booked a pre-tax loss of Rs 1,503 crore, aided by Rs 70 crore in profit share from associates.

The report stated that 732 million people in India, accounting for almost 83 per cent of internet users, consume the internet to access over-the-top (OTT) audio and video content. Other major use cases include online communication, social media, and online gaming, according to the Internet in India Report 2024.

Several heavyweight publishers and tech companies — Reddit, Yahoo, People, O'Reilly Media, Medium, and Ziff Davis (ZDNET's parent company) — have developed a response: the Really Simple Licensing (RSL) standard.