A Businessworld special issue (subscription required) attempts to demystify the Indian youth: according to a Hansa survey, the Indian youth uses the Internet most for email, then chat (which, it seems to me that they equate with instant messaging). Online shopping, gaming, dating/match-making and travel are rather low in the list. Details on media consumption and patterns of usage, with geographical segmentation are available in a table titled “Media, TV, Radio, Press, Internet” here.
The special issue also mentions that a bulk of online advertising targets the youth, and marketers are turning to the Internet to understand the youth better, particularly to blogs (the Sunsilk Gang of Girls portal gets mentioned for the gazillionth time). The youth doesn’t read newspapers and ‘new media’ allows them more choice and privacy. Mobile, however, isn’t as private and Onmobile is tracking users (we’ve mentioned this earlier) to make mobile advertising more relevant. There’s also a feature on how the youth has taken to the mobile, here. There isn’t much on Social Media in India, though.
While the issue throws up hardly any surprises, it does reiterate that media consumption is changing is a manner similar to that in the US, perhaps with a two or three year lag.