Over 99 million urban Indians active on the internet: Google

With over 99 million urban Indian users now active on the internet, financial services need to adopt a new approach to engage and serve the needs of the digitally savvy customers.

Internet also plays an important role at various stages of the buying process, according to a report by Google India.

The online medium is the most preferred source of information for internet users with over two-third of all internet users using online sources when researching for financial products, it said.

More than 66 per cent of the internet users who were in the market to buy financial products changed their mind about the product and brand. The influence of the internet research was the highest for loans (75 per cent home loans, 73 per cent personal loans) followed by insurance (motor insurance 70 per cent, health insurance 70 per cent and life insurance 69 per cent).

Internet plays an important role at various stages of the buying process with over 42 per cent users saying they became aware of new products and brands, 58 per cent saying that Internet helped in their initial research and over 62 per cent used Internet for intense research before deciding on their final purchase.

While the final purchase of the product or service is still done offline - Internet research influenced 2 out of 3 applications - with 24 per cent users buying or applying online, 70 per cent applying offline and 38 per cent buying offline influenced by online.

''India today has over 137 million Internet users, and a very high percentage of those users are urban users (99 million) with high disposable income. Given the reach of Internet to high value customers and its influence on the decision making for financial products - we believe that financial services can create significant value by innovating on the digital medium and adopting an 'online first' approach to serve the needs of the digitally savvy customers,'' Google India managing director and vice president (sales and operations) Rajan Anandan said.

The total search volume for finance related queries are growing at over 43 per cent (year-on-year) on Google.

On searches coming from desktop - banking related queries account for over 73 per cent of the total queries and is seeing growth of over 45 per cent y-o-y.

The report additionally revealed the most searched (top 5) Banking, Insurance & Investment Brands for the period April 2011 to March 2012: