Digital presence opportunity for India’s web professionals (Web Pros) will become $650-750 million in the next three years, predicts a report titled The Web Pro Ecosystem: The Catalysts to Unlocking India’s Digital Dividend.
As per the report, the country currently has 100,000 web professionals, comprising web designers, developers, digital agencies, IT service providers and any entrepreneur who helps other businesses get an online presence.
India is primarily a DIFM (do-it-for-me) market and web professionals play a key role in the digital enablement of small and micro businesses (SMBs), states the report prepared jointly by Endurance International Group (EIG) and Zinnov Consulting.
The report also maps the services that web professionals currently offer across four stages of SMB maturity, spanning from: creation of online presence through core services such as website builders, domain name & hosting, SSL and email hosting; helping clients in digital discovery through marketing-oriented attached services like SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)/SEM (Search Engine Marketing) and social media marketing; reselling third-party apps to improve productivity like office collaboration tools and custom-building web and mobile apps to help SMBs grow.
The adoption and market opportunity for web and mobile applications, transaction-ready or dynamic websites, and digital marketing will scale as SMBs in India move up the digital maturity curve and take ownership of their digital presence, it states.
Pari Natarajan, chief executive officer, Zinnov said, “Today, there are only 5 million domain names registered in India and 55% or 2.7 million domains are currently attached to a website. There are 1.2 million unique websites in India, out of which less than 100,000 are transaction-ready websites and dominantly accept cash for their services. Some 12% websites in India are SSL enabled and nearly 50,000 websites have chatbots.’’
The increasing trend in internet penetration, online commerce, and cybersecurity will grow the adoption of services for online presence, digital discovery and productivity applications by SMBs in India, as per the report.
