Brief History: India launched its first Internet venture long back in 1995 by introducing VSNL (Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd) service to the common public. The first Indian website was Rediff.com as it was the first Indian Domain registered in the year 1996. And in the same year, Planet India, Web Development Company, got into existence as one of the first Indian companies to offer Web Development Services and Hosting in India.
Now meet India’s first web browser – Epic! It was founded in the year 2010. Epic Browser is a privacy-centric web browser developed by Hidden Reflex and based on Chromium source code. It is dubbed as the first web browser from India. Today, the top five Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in terms of subscriber base in India are BSNL, Bharti Airtel, MTNL, Hathway and You Broadband.
For almost 9 years the Internet experience in the country remained less attractive, due to lack of knowledge, slow pace and narrow-band connections having speeds less than 56 Kbps. But today, India is the second-largest Internet user-base nation in the world. According to the Internet And Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), Internet users in the country stood at 220 million at the end of Dec, 2013.
To a certain extent, we have always wondered which websites are the best-cum-popular and which are not? According to Web Analytics and Information Company Alexa, the top websites in India that people visit are further likely to be those you come across almost every day. Alexa daily upholds track records of these websites but their stats are taken from three months of information database they save on these websites. Now let’s figure out Top 10 Most Popular Indian Websites below with their Alexa Ranking in India. First on our list is:
1.) Indiatimes.com – is one of the oldest and top Indian website started in 1996 (Domain Registration) and one of the leading news, shopping and job portal in India. Indiatimes is the flagship brand of Times Internet Limited. Times Internet Limited is in turn promoted by The Times Group, which has a 90% stake in it. Apart from News, Sports, Cricket, Astrology, and a number of other things, the portal also offers Shopping, Job, Music, and Travel information. Indiatimes Shopping claims it is India’s largest online shopping platform featuring over 30,000 products for sale across a wide range of categories such as apparels, accessories, jewellery, consumer durables/electronics, books, music, movies, etc. itimes.com is the social networking site. Gaana.com is a commercial music streaming service providing free and licensed music.
Alexa Global Rank: 104
Alexa India Rank: 9
Monthly Unique Visitors: 19.5 Million
2.) Flipkart – is first and most popular Indian e-commerce website. It was founded in 2007 by just an investment of Rs 4 lakh by two friends Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, both alumni of the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. They had been working for Amazon.com previously. Flipkart has launched its own product range under the name “DigiFlip”, offering camera bags, pen-drives, headphones, computer accessories, etc. In October and November 2011, Flipkart acquired the websites Mime360.com and Chakpak.com. Later that year, Flipkart bought the company, Letsbuy.com, for an estimated US$25 million. It was closed down and all traffic to Letsbuy have been diverted to Flipkart. Co-Founder of Flipkart Sachin Bansal, got Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2012-2013 from Economic Times, leading Indian Economic Daily.
Alexa Global Rank: 146
Alexa India Rank: 10
Monthly Unique Visitors: 18.5 Million
3.) Rediff.com – As mentioned previously, Rediff is the first Indian website to come into existence in 1996. Rediffmail brings the maximum number of visitors to the site. Besides Rediffmail, Rediff Bol, Rediff Songbuzz and Rediff Locale are other products that are quite famous and attract visitors. Rediff launched new service, group deals, named Rediff Deal Ho Jaye! This service, essentially, offers consumers local services in about 40 cities across India at discounts that range from 30 percent to 60 percent on any deals that they avail of.
Alexa Global Rank: 245
Alexa India Rank: 14
Monthly Unique Visitors: 17.5 Million
4.) Quikr.com – was launched on 12 July 2008 and currently has 4.5 million User-Base in 900 cities across India. It is one of India’s largest online and mobile classifieds portal based in Mumbai. Quikr provides the local community with a platform to help them buy, sell, rent and find something and address needs across many categories. Quikr was formerly known as Kijiji.in. The company is backed by Matrix Partners India, Omidyar Network, Norwest Venture Partners and invested in by eBay Inc.
Alexa Global Rank: 310
Alexa India Rank: 16
Monthly Unique Visitors: 16.5 Million
5.) Snapdeal.com – was started in February 2010 as a daily deals platform but expanded in September 2011 to become an e-commerce company via a marketplace model. The website was started by two people. Kunal Bahl, a Wharton graduate and Rohit Bansal, an alumnus of IIT Delhi in February 2010. With 20 million registered users, SnapDeal is one of the first and largest online marketplaces in India. They offer 4 million+ products across diverse categories from over 20,000 sellers, shipping to 4000 towns and cities in India. Snapdeal has raised a total of $102 million of funding from investors like Nexus, Bessemer, Indo-US Venture Partners and $50 million alone from eBay.
Alexa Global Rank: 315
Alexa India Rank: 20
Monthly Unique Visitors: 15.2 Million
6.) Myntra.com – is an Indian online shopping retailer of fashion and casual lifestyle products. The website was started by three partners, namely, Mukesh Bansal, Ashutosh Lawania, and Vineet Saxena in February 2007. All three are IIT alumni, and have worked for several start-ups. Myntra is headquartered in Bangalore and has been funded by Venture Capital funds like Tiger, Kalaari, IDG & Accel Partners. Myntra currently offers products from more than 350 Indian and international brands.
Alexa Global Rank: 392
Alexa India Rank: 22
Monthly Unique Visitors: 13.8 Millions
7.) Naukri.com – is an Indian job search engine operating in India founded in March 1997 by Info Edge (India) Ltd. It publishes a monthly report called Naukri JobSpeak. It has been recognized as the best classified website at the 2nd edition of the India Digital Awards organized by the Internet and Mobile Association of India. Naukri.com had a database of about 35 million registered job seekers and over 98,000 live job listings from Corporate Customers.
Alexa Global Rank: 402
Alexa India Rank: 29
Monthly Unique Visitors: 13.5 Million
8.) NDTV.com – is an Indian commercial broadcasting television network founded in 1988 by Radhika Roy and Prannoy Roy. NDTV is an acronym for the original name of the company, New Delhi Television. Over the years, NDTV has expanded its brand portfolio to seize opportunities beyond news space and has step-down subsidiaries: NDTV Lifestyle, NDTV Convergence (Mobile and Internet) and today it is the most followed and watched news website in India. NDTV is the seventh most popular website in India with Alexa Rank 30.
Alexa Global Rank: 422
Alexa India Rank: 30
Monthly Unique Visitors: 10.5 Million
9.) HDFC Bank.com – Indian financial services company based in Mumbai. Its the fifth largest bank in India by assets. It was incorporated in 1994 and was promoted by the Housing Development Finance Corporation (India’s largest housing finance company). Its customer base stood at 28.7 million customers on 31 March 2013. On 23 May 2008, HDFC Bank acquired Centurion Bank of Punjab taking its total branches to more than 1,000. HDFC Bank was the first bank in India to launch an International Debit Card in association with VISA. Today, HDFC Bank has 3,251 branches and 11,177 ATMs in 2,022 cities in India.
Alexa Global Rank: 431
Alexa India Rank: 32
Monthly Unique Visitors: 9.5 Million
10.) Intoday.in – is the digital presence of the India Today Group. It hosts brands like India Today Magazine, Aaj Tak News Channel, Business Today, etc. The company was founded in 1975 and its first publication was India Today International which was a fortnightly news magazine. Aroon Purie is the Chairman and Editor-in-Chief and Ashish Bagga is the CEO. It also has several Joint ventures and Licensing agreements with prominent brands for their Indian editions, like, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Reader’s Digest, Scientific American, etc.
Alexa Global Rank: 442
Alexa India Rank: 34
Monthly Unique Visitors: 7.2 Million
Did you know that Indian Blogs are also world-famous? Labnol.org and ShoutMeLoud.com, are some of the blogs that are very popular among western countries (moreover, no one presumes so easily that it’s an Indian Blog). There is so much of imminent talent that we can’t stop our self to share with you the future of Indian Web, especially for content writing. It’s hard to believe the countries like the US, Canada, Russia, Italy, China, etc. are hiring Indians for their website content. Today, major top positions like CEO, COO, VP, MD and so on, are of Indian in some of the world’s most renowned Web Companies. Even more surprisingly, out of the world top 1000 Web Developers and Designers 28% are Indians. Well, this is not the end, but just a beginning…
We will continue to show you the best of the Indian internet on our upcoming posts. Above were the Top Indian Websites that made us all ostentatious and somewhere we follow these Best Indian Websites in our daily routine work too.