Interesting spending power trends (survey)

Before engaging on our business plan for KOOLSKOOL, we wanted to test waters a bit and check if there is any hope for what we wanted to do. We also wanted to know a bunch of other things e.g. actual usage of the internet in our country (at least in our target market areas), amount of money being spent by students outside of the school system, or even clear adoption of technology.
We ran a survey in Delhi and Lucknow (two sample cities) covering about 400 students in multiple schools. The surveys were given out by school students and we did use a bit of the viral technique to get quick and decent sized coverage. Most of the schools had students from average income to high income families and belonged to senior middle, secondary and senior secondary classes. What came back validated quite a few of our assumptions and surprised us with some of the numbers. Below are some of the interesting ones.

Siblings in the household	31.5% are single child households 51.9% have one sibling, 13.7% have two siblings and 3% have three or more siblings
Primary stationery purchase	73.4%  buy from the neighborhood stationery shop
Pens	70% buy upto 5 pencils a month 21.2% buy more than 10 pens a year
Computer usage	91.3% have a PC or laptop at home 58% have a printer at home 27% buy between 2-5 cartridge (or set) in a year
Email usage	80% of respondents use email ~75% students do not have email communication with their teacher
Mobile Phones usage	72% own mobile phones 16.6% spend >Rs 500 per month
Electronic games console, personal music players ownership	49% own electronic games consoles 69% own a personal music player or some sort

The conclusion is as was evident to us. There is a lot of money in children’s pockets today or at least lots that they have access to. They are the customers of a Retailer’s future.