India's Festive E-commerce

India's festive e-commerce season is expected to deliver healthy spending growth, with premium purchases coexisting with aggressive bargain-hunting. According to Shubham Nimkar, Research Analyst at Counterpoint Research, the festive season will be healthy in value terms, but more measured in volume terms.

Quick Commerce Expansion

Quick commerce is expanding beyond its traditional grocery stronghold, with its widening appeal into fashion, electronics, and beauty likely to gather further pace this festive season. Devendra Meel, Chief Business Officer at Zepto, said festive shopping is becoming more diverse, with brands introducing festive-specific stock-keeping units for different occasions and regions.

Non-Metro India Demand

Non-metro India continues to be described as central to festive demand, with Achint Setia, Chief Executive Officer of Snapdeal, saying more than 80 per cent of Snapdeal's sales came from non-metro regions. A Meesho spokesperson also said 73 per cent of the platform's orders during Rakhi came from non-metro markets, with seller participation up 72 per cent year-on-year.

Artificial Intelligence Influence

Artificial intelligence was flagged repeatedly as a growing influence on shopping behaviour, with Setia saying 76 per cent of Snapdeal's orders were now influenced by AI in some form. The Infisum report projected AI and machine learning would improve retail productivity by 35-37 per cent by 2030 through conversational commerce, virtual try-ons and voice-enabled shopping.

Employment and Growth

On the employment front, Amazon India said it has created more than 1.6 lakh seasonal work opportunities across its pan-India operations network. Meesho expects to enable over 10 lakh indirect seasonal job opportunities this festive season, including about 6.5 lakh across its seller network and 3.75 lakh across its logistics ecosystem. The Infisum report projected India's e-commerce market to nearly triple from USD 125 billion in 2024 to USD 345 billion by 2030, growing at a compound annual rate of 18.4 per cent.

The following table shows the projected growth of India's e-commerce market:

According to Ragini Varma, Chief Business Officer at Fynd, the festive demand window is shifting earlier, rather than simply becoming more concentrated around Diwali, with pre-Navratri D2C order volumes already up 16 per cent year-on-year in August 2025.