The domestic Internet base amounts to about a million users now.

The Internet portal market in India will take off in Year 2000, according to Internet analysts in the region. "The online consumer mass market and the opportunities for portals in India will take off within two years," said A. "Abhi" Chaki, the director of research for bandwidth and access strategies at New York-based research group Jupiter Communications. Thirty to 40 Internet service providers are likely to commence operation in India by the end of the year and boost the domestic user base, according to R. Sangal, director of market research group IDC India. The domestic Internet base amounts to about a million users now, according to a recent issue of Business World magazine. India_s new telecom policy, focusing on convergent voice and data communications, is currently in the draft stage, and is expected to open the gates to even more ISPs. But as in many other Asian countries, most Indian sites do not draw sufficient proportions of traffic from within the country. A recent issue of Asiaweek magazine noted that Asian Internet users still tend to visit North American Web sites much more than local Web sites. There are no Indian sites which enjoy the global status or international traffic flows on the scale of a Yahoo! or AOL, said Sangal. A lot of notable contributions have been made by Indians based in countries like Singapore on Tamil "e-fonts." Indian portals hoping to offer free e-mail and homepages face challenges in making them superior to those available on U.S.-based sites like Yahoo and GeoCities.E-commerce revenues in India this year will amount to about $14 million, and then grow to $51 million in year 2000 and $162 million in year 2001, claimed IDC India.