India Festive Report 2025

Diwali continues to anchor India’s festive cycle, but the opportunity has grown far beyond a single week. From Navratri to New Year’s, a longer sequence of cultural and retail events is reshaping how and when brands capture consumer intent. Marketers are no longer optimising for a spike. They’re pacing for sustained momentum across acquisition, engagement, and monetisation.

India’s economic outlook supports this shift. GDP is projected to grow 6.5% in FY2025–26, with inflation easing to 3.7%. Consumer confidence is rising, and smartphone adoption is accelerating, especially in the premium segment, now expected to account for 20% of all shipments. With UPI transactions crossing 13 billion monthly, digital readiness is at an all-time high.

Built in collaboration with Meta

This report combines AppsFlyer’s mobile performance data with Meta’s perspective on discovery, commerce, and festive strategy. Together, we unpack app behaviour across platforms and verticals, and offer marketers a roadmap for winning throughout the full festive cycle.

Methodology

This report covers a 9-week festive window around Diwali 2024, spanning the pre-, during-, and post-festival phases to reflect the full user and campaign lifecycle.

• Timeframe: October to December 2024 
• App criteria: Android and iOS apps that met platform-specific install thresholds
• Metrics analysed:
  • Installs (organic and non-organic)
  • Sessions and retention
  • Spend per user (SOPU) 
  • Remarketing and UA Spend 
  • Fraud exposure

The festive season’s momentum began well before Diwali. During Navratri week (October 9–15, 2024), non-organic installs increased by 22% compared to the previous week, and total sessions rose 34% across Android and iOS. This surge was visible across app categories, as users began browsing, transacting, and engaging earlier in the season. Organic installs also rose by nearly 5%, indicating a broader rise in discovery alongside paid activity.

But while acquisition accelerated, remarketing efforts didn’t keep pace. Remarketing conversions grew just 6.6% week-over-week, suggesting that brands were focused more on top-funnel expansion than lifecycle depth during this critical early window.

These trends highlight Navratri as a high-intent phase that remains underleveraged. With users already active and competition still low, brands that shift campaign timelines forward stand to benefit from lower CPIs, longer engagement runways, and stronger downstream performance heading into Diwali.

• Strategy: Treat Navratri as the start of your festive lifecycle. Launch UA campaigns by early October, and pair them with sequenced re-engagement flows to maximise conversion and retention before peak season saturation.

The festive opportunity extended well beyond Diwali 2024, with several verticals continuing to grow after the peak week. Gaming saw non-organic installs rise by 29%, the strongest post-Diwali surge across all categories. Food & Drink followed with a 16% increase, while Travel and Finance climbed 5% and 4%, respectively, signalling that user intent remained consistently high well into November.

But while installs accelerated in these categories, remarketing efforts didn’t always follow. In Food & Drink, remarketing conversions declined by 6%, even as acquisition rose, pointing to a missed opportunity for second-purchase or loyalty reactivation. Finance showed a more balanced curve, with remarketing up 5% post-Diwali, aligned with install growth. Travel, however, saw remarketing drop by 1%, despite a 5% increase in non-organic installs.

The gap was most evident in Gaming, where installs surged but remarketing grew just 3%, revealing that much of the user influx wasn’t actively nurtured for retention or monetisation. Shopping, by contrast, declined across the board, making re-engagement in growth verticals even more essential for 2025.

These trends show that high-intent phases like the Post-Diwali Gifting & Travel window and Chhath Puja regional peak remain underused. With fewer players competing for attention and users still active, these weeks offer prime ground for brands to double down on conversion and loyalty.

• Strategy:  Reallocate remarketing budgets toward post-Diwali weeks. Especially for Gaming, Food & Drink, Finance, and Travel, verticals where install growth signalled strong intent, but re-engagement didn’t fully capitalise on the opportunity.

Session trends during Diwali 2024 showed clear divides across categories. While installs often peaked ahead of the holiday, engagement followed its own rhythm, driven by timing, category intent, and user context.

Food & Drink apps on iOS saw sessions rise by 11% during Diwali week compared to the week prior, likely fueled by seasonal meals, party planning, and family gatherings. Finance also saw a 10% session uplift on Android, suggesting increased transactional activity and festive spending.

Gaming held momentum across both phases, with Android sessions rising 5% during Diwali and 8% after, showing sustained engagement tied to downtime and device use. Travel followed a similar curve, with Android sessions up 2% post-Diwali as users resumed mobility and return-trip planning.

But not all verticals kept pace. Shopping sessions dropped sharply, down 17% during Diwali on Android and 20% on iOS post-Diwali, indicating a steep fall-off in browsing and conversion after the peak sales window. Entertainment, too, saw a 14% drop on iOS after Diwali, reinforcing its role as a short-cycle, event-led category.

Meanwhile, Finance and Food & Drink stayed stable post-Diwali, maintaining most of their Diwali week gains and underscoring their always-on utility value.

• Strategy: Build post-Diwali engagement flows in verticals like Shopping and Entertainment, where user interest often lingers beyond the campaign. Double down on Travel, Gaming, and Food & Drink to sustain lifecycle momentum through late festive phases.

The festive season drew high-intent users across several categories, especially in commerce, finance, and entertainment. Shopping apps saw average Day 1 retention rise from 24.2% in October to 25% in November, with top apps holding 31.4%. Finance followed a similar pattern, climbing from 22.2% to 23.3% and peaking at 33% among leading performers. These same categories also showed the strongest long-term traction: Finance best-in-category apps retained 13.2% of users by Day 30, while Shopping reached 6.5%.

Gaming apps saw some of the highest early engagement. Match games led the way with 43.2% Day 1 retention and 13.8% at Day 30. Action, Simulation, and Hypercasual also posted strong starts, with Day 1 averages above 34%, and sustained 2–6% of users by Day 30, depending on subgenre and lifecycle execution.

Entertainment and Travel apps also performed well, with top Day 1 retention near 34% and 27% respectively, and 6.6% Day 30 retention in both. These patterns point to a festive window where users were not just downloading—they were staying, especially in apps that matched timing with in-app relevance.

The delta between average and top performers was most evident beyond Day 7. Apps that retained 2–3x more users by Day 30 consistently delivered re-engagement touchpoints, personalised journeys, and clear value beyond the first session.

• Strategy: Use early engagement momentum to build long-term value. Plan messaging bursts between Days 5–10, optimise onboarding to encourage second and third opens, and build Day 14 offers around habit reinforcement. A strong Day 1 is only the beginning; what follows shapes outcomes.

Android campaigns extended well into November, with remarketing spend rising 40% in Travel, 26% in Shopping, and 14% in Food & Drink. Marketers clearly leaned on Android to maintain momentum after the festive peak, capitalising on continued interest across utility and commerce-driven verticals.

On iOS, engagement was more front-loaded. Travel and Finance saw post-Diwali UA growth of 8% and 39%, but remarketing in both dropped by 1% and 5%, respectively, leaving high-intent users underutilised. Food & Drink also saw a 6% drop in remarketing despite double-digit install gains.

Gaming and Entertainment were the rare bright spots: iOS Gaming remarketing jumped 94%, likely fueled by new device activations, while Entertainment rose 37%, aided by content-driven reactivation campaigns.

This contrast reveals a platform pacing gap: Android supported long-tail re-engagement, while iOS focused heavily on conversion during Diwali week itself. To unlock full festive value, marketers must treat UA and remarketing as sequenced—not simultaneous—efforts, adapting timing by platform.

• Strategy: Use Android remarketing to extend post-Diwali impact, especially in Travel, Shopping, and Food & Drink. On iOS, sync UA with lifecycle-based reactivation flows to avoid drop-off after Day 7. Campaign timing matters as much as spend.

The festive season was a clear monetisation moment, but not for everyone. Among the top 10 Shopping apps, Share of Paying Users (SOPU) rose 41% on Android and 25% on iOS in Q4 vs. Q1, outpacing overall category growth. These apps also recorded a 32% year-over-year increase in SOPU during the 2024 festive window, underscoring how improved conversion flows, brand trust, and post-install journeys helped unlock more revenue from the same users.

The gap between leaders and the rest was most visible in categories with strong transactional intent. In Entertainment, SOPU among the top 10 rose 38% on Android and 60% on iOS from January to December. Food & Drink and Finance showed positive growth across the year as well, though more moderate.

Gaming struggled to maintain festive conversion. SOPU declined across the board, down 29% on iOS and 10% on Android from January to December, despite increased re-engagement efforts. Finance also saw uneven patterns: Android SOPU grew slightly across H2, but iOS dropped 22% from January to December.

The takeaway: festive spending wasn’t distributed evenly. Apps that paired frictionless UX with compelling value propositions saw the biggest lifts, especially those in categories where purchase intent was already high.

• Strategy: Focus festive monetisation efforts on top cohorts and high-performing products. On Android, lean into pricing and flow optimisation. On iOS, retarget proven converters beyond Day 1 to drive incremental value when intent is already primed.

Fraud rates rose sharply after Diwali, with Food & Drink reaching 60% on iOS—the highest across all categories. The spike was likely driven by reward-heavy promotions, surges in post-Diwali gift orders, and iOS campaign targeting by sophisticated fraud actors. Entertainment fraud on Android also surged +74% post-Diwali, reversing its in-season decline, while Finance fraud hit 33%, largely due to click floods and install hijacking during sustained UA pushes.

Gaming maintained a relatively low overall fraud rate (3%) but showed the most severe increase in bot-based activity: bot share rose 163% post-Diwali, accompanied by 152% growth in install hijacking—likely linked to end-of-year reactivation campaigns and device-driven traffic spikes.

Fraud was most active during Chhath Puja and the Wedding & Lifestyle wave, when traffic volume, deal pressure, and targeting breadth expanded significantly. These periods also saw relaxed audience filters, shorter conversion windows, and broad attribution settings, creating ideal conditions for manipulation.

• Strategy: Tighten protections during and after the festive peak, especially in Food & Drink, Entertainment, and Finance. Focus on iOS spoofing prevention, bot detection on Android, and refining attribution windows where fraud-prone tactics (like install hijacking or fake engagement) tend to cluster.