Online Users in India Spending More on Payments Than Food & Travel

Since the lockdown in the country, online users have been forced to change their spending patterns to meet needs.

The spending trends of online users in India is seeing a drastic change during the lockdown.

(Photo: iStockphoto)

The two-week lockdown in India has changed a lot of trends for consumers in the country. Online shopping for electronics (mobiles mostly) to clothing has been displaced by the need to stock up with essentials.

It’s quite obvious that all your travel plans have been postponed, but how much impact has it made on your online activities in general?

To understand this better, we’ve got hold of a new report which shares interesting insights about the way people have changed their usage patterns on the internet, before the lockdown as well as during the lockdown.

As expected, the trends are heavily in favour of people using the internet for utility services, playing games, watching video content, while some of you still prefer to order food.

These detailed graphs give you an indication of change in the spending trends of Indian consumers online.

As you can see below, before the lockdown, (before 24 March 2020), people were spending more than half of their expense budgets on utilities, 12 percent on games & other video apps, while travel got a decent chunk of the budget. So did, online shopping as well as the food delivery business.

The utility services mostly include payment for power bills and mobile recharges among others.

(Data source: Wibmo research)(Photo: The Quint)

“Indian e-commerce sees a drastic 30 percent decline during the janata curfew, gaining only 50 percent of that in the following week,” points out a research report by a company called Wibmo. 

“This phase in our history will bring a significant shift toward online shopping with new products and services and as consumers start preferring the convenience.”

Govind Setlur, CEO, Wibmo

Now let’s take a look at the spending trends of Indian consumers during the lockdown.

(Data source: Wibmo research)(Photo: The Quint)

The change in behaviour is already visible, and the above data corroborates what Setlur from Wibmo had indicated.

Travel expenses are next to nothing, especially when all the domestic and international flights, as well as train services, were halted. Food delivery has been a challenge for e-commerce players like Zomato and Swiggy among others, and consequently, their demand has also come down.

But as many industry experts have suggested, internet use in online gaming and streaming apps has grown during the past two weeks, and even compelling people to shop online for daily essentials, if possible in their area. The growth in utility payments suggests an increase in payments for internet data usage.

It’ll be intriguing to see if there is a change in this trend for online users in the country after the lockdown is relaxed.