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Indian Cyber Cafes mark low growth
By siliconindia
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Thursday, 17 July 2008, 23:47 IST
New Delhi: The growth of Cyber cafes in India is falling sharply. The growth rate was at its peak in 2002 and maintained a steady growth in the years till 2006 and started falling down in the following years and has now reached at 20 percent in 2008.
The recent CII-IMRB report stated that the growth of the number of cyber cafes in 2008 is 20 percent, which was almost 60 percent in 2004 and 2005. It is estimated that there are 1, 80,000 cyber cafes in India.
According to the large industry players the reasons for the decline of growth are the lack of subsidy and support from the government and the increased security concerns and harassments of cyber cafe owners.
Naresh Ajwani, President, Sify, Consumer Infrastructure told Economic Times, "We have also seen a drop in our conversion rates from non-branded cyber cafes into branded Sify I-way cafes." Sify has around 3,000 I-way cafes, of which many have been conversions from non-branded cyber cafes.
Moreover one who wants to start a cyber cafe have to take no-objection certificate from the local police, this sometimes causes harassments of owners by the police.
According to Rajesh Charria, President, Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI), the decline in growth has been due to the extra-strict laws of maintaining a log of all sites visited by a customer along with a copy of his or her id proof. "While there should be no compromise with security, the government should make a central law for cafes and remove local police interference. The government's laws are discriminatory towards cyber cafes vis-a-vis PCOs," he added.
