Indians leading the way

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Outside of the United States, Indians are emerging as the largest consumers of English news online, reveals an analysis by Business Standard of visitors' profile of some of the leading global news websites. This analysis is based on visitors' location, accessed through Alexa.com, an Amazon company, which analyses online traffic.

The data reveal an eclectic appetite for news among Indians. As Table 1 shows, Indians are one of the leading readers of American, British, Chinese, East Asian and Pakistani news sources.

But does this mean Indians are deserting domestic publications? Probably not. As the last column of table 1 reveals, it appears that for most Indians, these international publications are an add-on and not the preferred first choice. This can be inferred as none of these websites feature in the top-100 most visited websites by Indians. That Indians are loyal readers of Indian publications was also captured by ComScore, an internet technology company, which published a report in 2013 that said between October 2012 and October 2013 there was a 34 per cent increase in the number of visitors on Indian news websites.