New Delhi: Delhi has emerged as the top ranked state in terms of overall Internet readiness including e-infrastructure and e-participation, overtaking last year’s winner Maharashtra, according to a report titled ‘Index of Internet readiness of Indian states’ by Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and Nielsen Holdings PLC, a global information and data measurement company unveiled on Wednesday.

The capital city-state is followed by Karnataka, Maharashtra, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

Internet readiness index is a composite benchmark of four components, i.e., e-infrastructure, e-participation, IT-environment and government e-services. All four components have been given equal weightage in the model, claims the research report.

Among the smaller states, Delhi is at the top followed by Chandigarh and Puducherry. Chandigarh is ranked second in both e-infrastructure and e-participation. Puducherry ranks after Chandigarh when measured on the e-infrastructure index.

The report also highlights the status of digital start-up ecosystem of the states. It finds that Karnataka, Delhi and Maharashtra are the top three states with the highest number of digital start-ups. There are a total of 242 start-up incubators in the country, out of which 61 incubators are in Tamil Nadu.

Speaking at the launch of the report, IT secretary, Aruna Sundararajan, said, “Niti Aayog and other ministries of the government are increasingly trying to see that which states are leading in best practices. We are trying to find out these practices and the possibility of sharing these practices in benchmarking where each state can be."

Among the northeastern states, Nagaland tops the list, closely followed by Manipur and Tripura. Nagaland leads in IT environment and performs moderately well in other categories to get to the top.

“Significantly, even within smaller states, the northeastern states ranked low in terms of overall Internet readiness. Therefore, much more needs to be done in the form of investment and infrastructure development in the region," the report said.

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