Data consumption per person has seen an almost two-fold rise in India following the Covid pandemic with the increasing adoption of digital services.

Speaking at Infocom 2020, an ABP Group initiative, Sanjay Gupta, country manager and vice-president, Google India said the digital economy had become more accessible and digital services were playing a bigger role in people’s lives.

“Back in 2014, monthly data consumption per Indian user was just a mere 86MB. By 2018, that had risen to 8GB, helped by the steeply falling data prices. But in just a few months since Covid struck, monthly data consumption has soared to 14GB per user per month, almost doubling versus 2018,” Gupta said, adding that at 500 million, India is already home to the world’s second largest online population .

Rising adoption of digital payment services by small SMEs and video conferencing, particularly in education, have been among the key drivers towards the adoption of digital services during the pandemic.

Citing an example, Gupta said local grocers had started using digital payments during the lockdown offering safety and convenience to their customers. “Many even put their inventory and catalogues on Google Sheets to share with their customers in the absence of e-commerce options.”

He said that the pace and scale of technology adoption brought on by the pandemic was unprecedented.

“In some ways in the past 10 months, we have squeezed in potential changes for the next 10 years,” he said.

Realising further potential, Google in July had said it will invest USD 10 billion in the country through a mix of equity investment, partnerships and operational infrastructure and ecosystem investments.