Mobile internet user growth slowed down drastically in 2021, shows data

389 million people still did not use mobile internet in 2021, while 765.8 million did

On March 8, the Reserve Bank of India launched a renewed payments service for feature phones. The service called UPI123Pay is a successor to BHIM USSD 2.0 service, which allows feature phones to make payments using interactive voice response (IVR), app functionality, missed calls, and proximity sound-based payments.

Although exact data on the number of feature phone users is not available, estimates suggest there are nearly 400 million such users in the country. Unified Payments Interface has been successful among smartphone users in the country.

A Business Standard analysis shows that by the end of December 2021, India had 389 million users