India’s eCommerce Growth Held Steady, Then Something Shifted
India’s eCommerce market is compounding fast. Growth across the Shopping vertical looks uneven up close, driven by two forces pulling in different directions: a concentrated festive calendar that peaks during Navratri, well ahead of Diwali itself, and a structural shift toward quick commerce.
India’s festive e-commerce season opened with GMV nearly 3.5 times business-as-usual levels in the first 11 days, a 20-22% year-over-year surge tied to the Navratri kickoff, according to Redseer. The same rhythm shows up on the web side too: India’s eCommerce websites drew roughly 58 billion visits over the past year, growing 28% year over year, the fastest of any major market tracked.
A second driver runs alongside the festive calendar, quick commerce. India’s Q-commerce market has scaled into a $10 billion-plus GMV segment, accounting for roughly 15% of all e-commerce GMV, a far higher share than in any other major market except China. Grocery and convenience-format shopping, once the slowest category to move online, is now one of the fastest-growing corners of India’s app economy.
This report examines where that growth is consistent and where the picture gets more complicated one layer down, across installs, acquisition, retention, remarketing, and fraud within India’s Shopping vertical, comparing India against global benchmarks over eight quarters, from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026.
* All results are based on fully anonymous and aggregated data. To ensure statistical validity, we follow strict volume thresholds and methodologies and only present data when these conditions are met.
55% lower iOS install fraud rate in India versus the global benchmark
42% pullback in India’s remarketing spend over two quarters, even as UA spend rose 10%
18% YoY growth in India’s Share of Paying Users on Android, while the global benchmark held flat
India’s Navratri festive quarter drove 136% YoY jump in Android installs
India’s Android installs climbed 136% year over year between Q3 2024 and Q3 2025, the quarter capturing India’s Navratri festive season. AppsFlyer’s India Festive Report 2026 confirms this is Shopping’s actual demand peak, not Diwali itself. Globally, installs grew just 28% over the same period. Organic installs drove even more of that growth, up 143% year over year against 18% globally, while paid installs grew a more modest 48% versus 15% globally.
This isn’t only a festive-quarter effect. Looking at the full two-year period, from Q3 2024 to Q2 2026, India’s installs still grew 85% versus just 2% globally. The gap holds up outside the festive peak as well, just on a smaller scale than the single-quarter number above.
The peak eased afterward, in step with the rest of the world: India’s installs cooled 22% from their Q3 2025 high by Q2 2026, close to the 20% global cooldown over the same stretch. Since both moved together, this recent pullback looks more like a broader industry shift than something specific to India. Indian Subcontinent figures track India closely throughout, confirming this is an India story, not a regional one.
The surge lines up with India’s Navratri season, Shopping’s actual demand peak, not Diwali, which is a low point for the vertical. We lead with this peak number on purpose: an average across the year would hide the exact spike marketers need to plan around.
Shopping Install Trend (Normalized)
Organic installs in India grew 143% YoY, during Navratri, before paid overtook in early 2026
India’s organic-to-paid gap widened sharply during Navratri: organic installs rose 21% quarter over quarter, paid grew 31%, a rare stretch where paid outpaced organic in percentage terms even though organic still led in absolute volume.
Outside that peak, the gap closes: organic installs fell 7% in India across H1 2025 to H1 2026, in line with a 6% global decline. The 143% figure is Navratri’s lift, not a year-round trend.
That pattern reversed by early 2026: organic installs fell 41% between Q3 2025 and Q1 2026 while paid held steady, and paid overtook organic in absolute terms by Q1 2026, a position it held through Q2 2026.
Globally, organic grew 18% and paid grew 15% over the same period, both moving at a similar pace with no crossover, unlike in India, where the actual number of paid installs overtook organic.
Organic Install Trend (Normalized)
Paid Install Trend (Normalized)
India’s remarketing spend fell 42% in two quarters as UA spend rose 10%
Between Q4 2025 and Q2 2026, India’s remarketing ad spend fell by 42%, while UA spend rose by 10%. Globally, the pattern runs in the opposite direction on the UA side: remarketing spend fell by 16%, while UA spend declined by 25%.
India’s remarketing spend reached its highest level in the full two-year window in Q4 2025, following a steady build through the first half of 2025. UA spend, by comparison, grew in nearly every quarter since Q1 2025, a steadier climb across the whole window that continued even as remarketing spend reversed.
That peak likely reflects re-engaging users acquired during the Q3 Navratri surge, timed around Diwali. The subsequent 42% drop over Q1 and Q2 2026 tracks the festive cycle winding down, a seasonal pullback rather than a strategic move away from remarketing.
Remarketing Spend Trend (Normalized)
UA Spend Trend (Normalized)
Remarketing conversions in India grew 118% YoY, then fell 62% by Q2 2026
India’s remarketing conversions on Android grew 118% year over year between Q3 2024 and Q3 2025, far outpacing a 23% global gain over the same period, and continued to climb by 71% between Q2 2025 and Q4 2025. The following two quarters gave back much of that growth: conversions eased slightly into Q1 2026, then fell 62% in a single quarter by Q2 2026. Global conversions moved within a much narrower band over the same period, actually rising 10% between Q1 2026 and Q2 2026 rather than falling.
The size and timing of the conversions closely match the pullback in remarketing spend, consistent with lower spend producing fewer conversions.
This pairing is worth reading as a single story once this data reaches the room. A spend cut of this size would be expected to move conversions somewhat. Still, a 62% single-quarter move against a roughly 42% spend cut suggests conversion efficiency itself may also be shifting, alongside volume.
Remarketing Conversions (Normalized)
Shopping sessions in India grew 144% YoY on Android, nearly double the global pace
India’s Android sessions grew 144% year over year between Q3 2024 and Q3 2025, compared with a 73% global gain over the same period. Within that window, growth concentrated sharply in a single quarter: sessions rose 127% between Q2 2025 and Q3 2025 alone, and iOS grew by almost the same amount, up 143% over the same period. Global sessions rose too in that window, though far more modestly, up 36% on Android, meaning India’s single-quarter jump outpaced the rest of the world by roughly 3.6x.
The elevated session level held firmly afterward, more firmly than installs did. India’s Android sessions cooled just 5% from their Q3 2025 peak through Q2 2026, a far gentler pullback than global’s 12% cooldown over the same stretch. iOS sessions kept climbing past their initial peak entirely, up 13% between Q3 2025 and Q2 2026, again outpacing global iOS growth of 8% over the same window.
This gap between cooling installs and sustained, even growing, sessions is worth exploring directly. Existing users opening the app more often, even as new-install momentum shifts, would be a genuinely encouraging signal sitting underneath an otherwise cooling top-line growth number.
Sessions Trend (Normalized)
Day 30 retention in India fell 41% in two quarters, after holding steady all year
Day 30 retention on Android remained essentially flat through 2025, at 4% across Q2, Q3, and Q4, with only minor quarter-to-quarter movement. It then fell 41% in the two quarters between Q4 2025 and Q2 2026. Globally, the same shape appears but is softer. Retention held steady through 2025 before falling 30% over the final two quarters. iOS shows a comparable pattern: India’s Day 30 retention fell by 31% in that window, compared with a 29% global decline.
Day 1 and Day 7 retention follow the same timing but at a gentler scale. Day 1 fell 8% in that same two-quarter window on Android, and Day 7 fell 16%, both far smaller moves than Day 30’s 41%. Whatever is affecting retention arrived recently rather than building gradually over the year, and the effect compounds the longer a user has gone since install.
That timing and shape together suggest the reactivation window, roughly two to eight weeks after install, is where this shift is concentrated and where it started. Since the shift is recent rather than gradual, understanding what changed in the past two quarters specifically would matter more here than looking at year-over-year averages alone.
Retention Trend (Q2 2025 vs Q2 2026)
India’s share of paying users is closing the gap on Android, narrowing on iOS
India’s Share of Paying Users (SOPU) on Android is 11% below the global figure as of Q1 2026. That gap has been closing: India’s Android SOPU grew 18% between Q3 2024 and Q1 2026, while the global figure remained roughly flat over the same period. On iOS, the relationship runs the other way. India leads the global figure by 6% as of Q4 2025, but that lead has been narrowing. India’s iOS SOPU fell by 9% over the same period, while global iOS SOPU rose by 3%.
This points to a genuine platform difference in how India’s user base converts to paying status, and a directional one worth watching rather than a fixed gap. India’s Android base is closing the distance on global benchmarks while its smaller, historically stronger iOS base is giving some of that lead back.
This is worth exploring as a monetization and platform-investment question. The direction of travel on both platforms, not just where each currently sits, should shape how investment is split between them going forward: a smaller, more monetizable base alongside the current Android-heavy acquisition mix.
Share of Paying Users (Q1 2025 vs Q1 2026)
India’s fraud rate sits well below global on both platforms, though Android ticked up last quarter
India’s Android fraud rate fell from 10% in Q3 2024 to 3% in Q2 2026, a 75% improvement over the full window, and the global Android rate fell 66% over the same period to 7%, still well above India’s level. On iOS, the pattern repeats at a larger scale, India down 94% to 1% against a global decline of 90% to 3%.
Both India and global rates swung through 2024 and early 2025 before settling into a lower, steadier band from Q2 2025 onward. The most recent quarter is worth flagging directly: India’s Android rate rose 30% between Q1 2026 and Q2 2026, while the global Android rate fell 25% over the same window. iOS moved in the opposite direction for India, continuing to improve, though at a slower pace than the global iOS rate’s sharper drop in that same quarter.
The two-year trend remains a strong measurement-confidence signal. India’s fraud levels remain well below the global average across both platforms. The Android uptick in the most recent quarter is a small move in absolute terms, but it runs counter to the broader improving trend and is worth watching to see whether it continues or reverses again.
Fraud Rate Trend (Normalized)
India leads on installs, organic, and sessions, holds a smaller UA spend share
Among global markets measured for market share (AppsFlyer’s benchmark set excludes China), India’s Android lead peaks on Sessions at 71%, ahead of even its 63% Overall installs share and its 47% Organic installs share. On iOS, India holds a consistent second-place position across all three: 16% on installs and 14% on organic, though its Sessions share is lower at 6%, fifth among measured countries rather than second.
UA ad spend tells a different part of the story. India holds 19% of global Android UA spend, second only to the United States at 48%, a smaller share than its install, organic, or session numbers would suggest. On iOS, the gap is wider still: India holds a 2% share of UA spend, seventh among eight countries measured, while the United States alone commands 62%.
The pattern across all four metrics points to the same signal from different angles: India generates a large share of global install and engagement volume in Shopping, while commanding a smaller share of the global ad dollars behind that activity.
India Market Share per Metric (Q2 ‘2026)
64% of AI-assistant queries focus on UA and remarketing performance
According to AppsFlyer’s State of eCommerce for Marketers, 2026 Edition, a global analysis of over 8,000 AI-assistant queries from nearly 400 eCommerce brands, campaign-level performance across UA and remarketing dominates at 64% of the questions eCommerce marketers ask AppsFlyer’s AI assistant. Monetization questions (ROAS, revenue, LTV) account for 27%, and engagement or retention questions, sessions, DAU/MAU, churn) make up 9%. Attribution questions follow a similar pattern: retargeting and re-engagement mechanics account for the largest attribution topic at 27%, with SKAN and iOS privacy adding another 16%, together driving 43% of all attribution queries.
The sophistication of these queries skews toward the immediate. Within the largest query category, performance data and campaign analysis, 48% are quick-answer requests, preset prompts, and simple data pulls. In comparison, strategic and diagnostic queries involving anomaly detection or causal analysis represent 4%. Across all queries, 78% specify what marketers want but frame it around a single metric, while 12% demonstrate multi-variable or decision-oriented analysis.
This is a global pattern rather than an India-specific one. Still, it aligns closely with what appears in India’s own numbers: remarketing already commands substantial attention in how marketers query performance data, yet remarketing spend itself fell sharply over the same period this report covers. The tools and attention are already pointed at remarketing performance, while the retention mechanics underneath it, which explain why users stop coming back, get a smaller share of that same analytical energy.
AI Assistant questions split by type among eCommerce marketers: AI Funnel
- Most commerce brands claim they are chasing quality users, yet performance is still reported and rewarded on installs, downloads, and reach. Where do you see this gap between stated intent and actual measurement costing brands the most, and what would it take to close it?
- To suggest that Indian commerce advertisers are still chasing only vanity metrics would overlook how sophisticated the market has become. Most marketing leaders already track retention, LTV, repeat orders, and other indicators of customer quality. While CMOs measure business health on first-time buyers and net margin, the broader ad-tech ecosystem still transacts primarily on top-of-funnel currency: CPMs, CPCs, and Cost-Per-Install (CPI). This gap creates noise, operational friction, and hidden costs across the growth engine. This can show up in three ways. First, there is an “arbitrage tax”: when media is optimized and settled on raw installs, platforms are incentivized to deliver the easiest conversions, while brands absorb the financial risk of users who do not progress further. Second, brands can end up double-paying for acquisition: low-intent downloads inflate the top of the funnel, only for marketers to spend again on retargeting to turn those users into actual customers. Third, there is internal friction: UA teams may report an efficient CPI while finance evaluates the same acquisition through profitability and payback, creating additional effort to reconcile two different views of performance. Closing this gap requires optimization and commercial models to move closer to business outcomes, using post-install signals and measures such as Cost Per Converted User (CPCU) to connect media investment to actual value. Closing the gap requires aligning the commercial model, optimization signals, and accountability around business outcomes. First, outcome-based contracting: move beyond upfront CPI towards models such as Cost-Per-Converted-User (CPCU) or post-install milestones, tying media costs more closely to verified outcomes. Second, real-time signal feedback: feed post-install conversion and basket-value signals back into optimization so media spend can shift away from low-intent users and towards higher-value cohorts. Third, shared accountability: align UA teams, agencies, and media partners around common metrics such as cohort retention, repeat purchases, and payback, rather than raw acquisition volume. Together, these shifts can connect media buying more directly to the economics of the business.
- As the Indian commerce market matures and acquisition costs keep rising, the case for heavy upfront spend on new users gets harder to defend. What does it actually take, in terms of proof points or internal pressure, for a brand to meaningfully shift budget toward retention?
- Every CMO knows that keeping a buyer is cheaper than chasing a new one, yet marketing budgets remain hooked on top-of-funnel User Acquisition. It is the classic digital retail paradox: we celebrate pouring thousands of new users into the top of the bucket while ignoring the massive leak at the bottom. Shifting budget from new downloads toward retention isn’t a strategy debate; it is a proof-of-work problem. The challenge is proving when retention should take priority. That requires looking beyond download and acquisition volumes to understand where profitability actually emerges across the customer lifecycle. Rising CAC across Tier-1 and Tier-2 markets can mean that the first transaction delivers limited or even negative unit economics, while profitability emerges through the third or fourth purchase. When cohort analysis proves that re-engaging a registered customer shortens the capital payback period from six months down to 45 days, the economics of retention are difficult to ignore. The same applies to reactivation: targeted, personalized engagement across WhatsApp, push, and high-intent media can cost significantly less than acquiring a new user, while potentially driving stronger basket values. The conversation, therefore, needs to move beyond MAUs and download volumes towards repeat purchases, cohort profitability, and payback. When retention is measured as a contributor to margin, rather than a CRM metric, media allocation can increasingly follow demonstrated customer value.
- On day one, a one-time buyer and a lifetime customer often look identical in the data. How early, realistically, can brands separate the two, and what signals matter most in making that call?
- On day one, a bargain hunter and a future high-LTV customer look virtually indistinguishable in the data. Both may complete a purchase and register as a successful conversion, but the difference in intent often becomes clearer through what happens next. The reality is that a significant segment of any commerce user base is fundamentally deal-hungry. They buy when a compelling promotion is presented, and there is no magic switch to deterministically separate them from loyalists on day one. Attempting to draw a hard line on day one is a recipe for false positives. Instead, smart brands look for directional signals over a 72-hour to 7-day window to guide their media allocation. Engagement depth can be one such signal, comparing navigational breadth vs single-item checkout. For instance, a user who arrives through a promotion, buys a single discounted product, and exits behaves differently from someone who explores categories, views complementary products, or saves items for later. Next, basket composition can provide further context, with broader, multi-category purchases indicating interest beyond a single offer. Payment behavior also adds another layer to this, while post-purchase behavior can be one of the strongest signals —whether users return to track an order, engage with notifications, or respond to personalized communication. Realistically, you cannot separate these cohorts on day one with 100% certainty. However, by tracking these early directional signals, growth teams can avoid overspending retargeting dollars on pure deal-seekers while quietly nudging high-potential buyers into repeat conversion loops.
- Growth and efficiency are often treated as a single mandate, but rarely move together in practice. When brands are pushed to deliver both at once, what do they typically get wrong?
- Treating growth and efficiency as a single, simultaneous mandate sounds great in a boardroom deck, but on the ground, it is like stomping on the gas pedal and the brakes at the exact same time. They operate on opposite mechanics: growth requires calculated financial risk to expand market share, while efficiency requires cutting marginal waste to protect unit economics. When leadership expects teams to deliver aggressive volume and tight efficiency targets simultaneously, the tension often shows up in how media budgets are allocated and evaluated. One common outcome is fragmentation: budgets are spread across multiple channels to balance reach, acquisition, and CAC, but without enough scale for individual channels to deliver meaningful impact. Another is an overemphasis on short-term payback, pushing spend towards retargeting and high-intent environments at the expense of new audience discovery. While this can improve near-term ROAS, it can limit future demand. The third challenge is applying the same performance expectations to initiatives at very different stages of maturity. A new acquisition campaign, particularly in an emerging market, may need time and scale to establish its economics, while an established retargeting program can be judged against a more mature baseline. Ultimately, the brands that navigate this successfully don’t treat growth and efficiency as a blended average; they decouple them into distinct portfolio buckets. They allocate a fixed percentage of capital strictly for aggressive, volume-led acquisition with wider margin thresholds, while applying non-negotiable payback criteria to mature channels—allowing growth to feed the top of the funnel while efficiency optimizes the bottom on completely different timelines.
- Indian commerce brands often see their market as a special case, shaped by scale, price sensitivity, and diversity. Which lesson already playing out in other markets do you think is likely to catch up with brands here next?
- Indian CMOs and digital growth teams have developed a high degree of performance discipline, shaped by a market where tight unit economics demand constant scrutiny of media efficiency. However, underlying platform architectures are global, and a shift playing out across developed markets is bound to hit Indian commerce next: the consolidation of measurement, privacy, and signal loss. The first lesson is that granular, deterministic retargeting cannot be the only foundation for performance. As user-level signals become less available, stronger first-party data, predictive modeling, and broader intent signals will become increasingly important. The second is the rise of retail media as a core performance channel. Commerce platforms can connect media exposure more directly to transactions and closed-loop measurement, making their inventory increasingly valuable as eCommerce and qCommerce players build out advertising capabilities. But the opportunity extends beyond commerce screens. As consumers move between CTV, mobile, and retail environments, performance strategies will increasingly need to connect exposure across screens with measurable actions downstream. The third is the move beyond single-touch attribution. As user-level signals compress, global commerce leaders have stopped relying on last-touch attribution dashboards alone. They embraced modern, AI-driven Media Mix Modeling (MMM) to measure true incrementality across blended channels. Indian CMOs will soon make the same transition—moving past single-touch attribution rules toward holistic incrementality testing. The implication for Indian marketers is less about replicating these shifts and more about preparing for the same underlying changes in how performance will need to be measured, targeted, and optimized. Building stronger data foundations and outcome-oriented measurement today can help brands adapt as the availability of granular signals continues to evolve.
iOS carries a smaller share of Shopping installs than Android, but converts users to paying status at a meaningfully higher rate. The current acquisition mix may be under-investing in the platform relative to its return. Explore reallocating a test budget to iOS and measuring the conversion lift relative to the current split.
India's Android fraud rate rose 30% quarter over quarter after two years of consistent improvement, breaking from an otherwise steady downward trend. Review which channels or sources drove that shift before scaling Android UA spend further, since a single-quarter reversal after sustained improvement is the kind of signal worth catching early rather than after it compounds.
India's remarketing spend peaked in Q4 2025 around Diwali, then fell by 42% over the next two quarters as the festive cycle wound down, while UA spend continued to climb. Since the drop is seasonal, it's worth planning for the Q4 remarketing budget to trend toward the 2025 peak as next year's festive period approaches.
Day 30 retention fell sharply in the same two quarters that remarketing spend pulled back, while Day 1 retention barely moved, pointing to a leak that opens after install rather than at it. Explore building a reactivation push specifically timed to the two-to-eight-week post-install window, rather than spreading remarketing budget evenly across the whole user lifecycle.
Paid installs overtook organic in absolute volume by Q1 2026, reversing the organic-led pattern that held through most of 2025, a shift that didn't happen globally. Worth checking whether the acquisition mix in current plans still reflects organic as the larger channel, and adjusting the paid-to-organic split to match where installs are actually coming from now.
