17% share of Shopping’s entire season revenue captured in Navratri week alone, on Android
30% of Food & Drink’s iOS installers made a purchase within 30 days in October
26% peak fraud rate for Travel this season
India’s Festive Season Unfolds in Phases, Not One Peak
Diwali remains the moment India’s festive season is built around, but consumer and marketer attention doesn’t arrive and depart on a single day. Shopping’s peak lands during Navratri, well before Diwali itself. Finance’s peak lands the week after Diwali, tied to Chhath Puja. Entertainment’s biggest single-week swing has nothing to do with either. It’s tied to the opening matches of the Asia Cup cricket tournament in early September. Each vertical moves on its own calendar, not a shared one built around a single day.
That spread gave the season real room to build momentum. Real GDP grew 8.2% in the July-September quarter of FY2025-26, and digital payments kept pace. The average daily UPI transaction value crossed $10.35 billion in August 2025 alone, well ahead of Diwali itself.
That momentum showed up in festive shopping too. E-commerce order volumes grew 24% year-over-year during the festive window, with gross merchandise value up 23% and quick commerce order volume up 120%. A report found that 93% of Indian consumers shopped online this festive season, and Tier 2 and 3 cities accounted for roughly 55% of festive orders, spread across the country rather than concentrated in major metros.
This report analyzes seven verticals: Gaming, Finance, Shopping, Entertainment, Food & Drink, Travel, and Utility & Productivity. It analyzes how installs, monetization, retention, ad spend, and fraud changed over an 11-week period from August 18 through October 27, 2025. The report examines how the festive season impacts each vertical, pinpointing where the biggest opportunities and risks lie outside Diwali week itself.
Methodology:
– Timeframe: August 18 through October 27, 2025
– App criteria: Android and iOS apps across seven categories: Gaming, Finance, Shopping, Entertainment, Food & Drink, Travel, and Utility & Productivity
– Metrics analyzed: Installs, remarketing conversions, IAP revenue, share of paying users, UA and remarketing ad spend, fraud rate and type, and Day 1/3/7/14/30 retention
* 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.
Shopping’s non-organic installs fall 32% on iOS during Diwali week
Shopping’s festive rush peaked well ahead of Diwali this year, with organic and non-organic acquisition both cresting earlier in the season. By Diwali week itself, non-organic installs on iOS eased 32% from that pre-Diwali high, with organic acquisition easing across both platforms as well.
Travel moved in the opposite direction, rising as travelers planned and booked trips home for Diwali. Organic installs climbed 27% on Android, and 17% on iOS, and non-organic installs rose 20% on Android and 37% on iOS.
Entertainment’s largest install spike of the season landed in early September, timed to the Asia Cup cricket tournament’s opening matches, which fell within the festive season’s calendar window. Installs rose 161% on Android and 160% on iOS that week compared with the week before.
Gaming’s acquisition mix shifted furthest toward paid during Diwali week itself, with Android organic share dropping to 37%, its lowest point of the entire season, down from a high of 45% in mid-September.
Timing reveals each vertical’s real opportunity: shift acquisition spend to match each vertical’s demand window, easing Shopping’s spend ahead of Diwali and holding Travel’s steady through the festival, when its demand keeps climbing.
Overall installs
Organic installs
Non-organic Installs
Food & Drink’s organic installs rise 20% on iOS during Diwali week, while non-organic falls 20%
Food & Drink is the one vertical where organic and non-organic installs move in opposite directions during Diwali week, and it happens on both platforms. Organic installs rise 20% above the pre-Diwali average on iOS, while non-organic acquisition softens by the same margin over the same period. Android shows the same shape, organic up 15%, non-organic down 17%.
Travel and Utility & Productivity see organic and non-organic installs rise together during Diwali week, consistent with overall demand for both, travelers booking trips home for the holiday, and Utility apps seeing broader interest tied specifically to the festival itself. Shopping sees organic and non-organic fall together, consistent with a season that had already front-loaded demand before Diwali.
Food & Drink stands out because its two channels move in opposite directions, not together. Ease paid spend when organic reach is already carrying more of the load, specifically during Diwali week.
Organic vs. non-organic installs trend per platform
Share of installs by platform
Finance’s remarketing conversions rise 124% on iOS the week after Diwali
Shopping’s remarketing rebound follows the early-arriving pattern already seen in its installs. Remarketing on iOS overshot its pre-Diwali average by 18% within a week of the festival ending, while Android remarketing stayed below its pre-Diwali pace over the same period.
Finance moved on a different clock entirely. Remarketing conversions rose 23% on Android and 124% on iOS in the week after Diwali, a window that overlaps with Chhath Puja, which falls in late October.
Travel’s remarketing conversions rose into Diwali week on both platforms, up 21% on Android and 28% on iOS versus the pre-Diwali average, and held those gains into the following week.
Remarketing timing splits by vertical just as installs do: time remarketing spend to each vertical’s own calendar, closing it early as with Shopping, opening it after the festival as with Finance, and holding it steady as with Travel.
Remarketing conversions
Finance’s remarketing spend rises 102% during Diwali week
Ad spend timing splits by what each vertical is actually trying to do during the festival: acquire new users or re-engage existing ones, and that split explains most of the movement here.
Remarketing spend climbs through the festival for Finance, continuing to build across both weeks. Finance’s Android remarketing spend rose 102% during Diwali week versus its pre-Diwali average, then rose another 97% the week after. Finance’s remarketing conversions also surge in this same window, tied to Chhath Puja. Marketers are re-engaging Finance users as that activity continues to build, right through the festival itself.
Travel’s remarketing spend peaks exactly at Diwali itself, then eases once the day passes. Its Android remarketing spend rose 40% during Diwali week versus its pre-Diwali average, then fell 19% the week after, timed to travelers finalizing plans right around the festival itself.
UA spend softens during Diwali week itself for verticals whose real demand had already arrived earlier in the season, then recovers in the days after. Entertainment’s iOS spend pulled back 31% during Diwali week versus its pre-Diwali average, before rising 47% the week after. Shopping’s iOS spend dipped 22% before rising 19%; its Android spend slipped 17% and remained 3% below its pre-Diwali average the week after. Shopping’s installs had already been front-loaded ahead of Diwali, so this pattern reflects a timing shift that had already occurred earlier in the season.
Utility & Productivity’s iOS UA spend spiked 43% at Diwali, then fell 14% the week after, consistent with a vertical whose relevance centers specifically on Diwali itself. Its Android UA spend stayed nearly flat at Diwali, down 1% versus its pre-Diwali average, then fell another 10% the week after, both ending below their pre-Diwali average.
Sustain remarketing budget through a festival’s peak, where momentum keeps building, as with Finance, and shift UA spend to the recovery window after the festival, where it eases first, as with Shopping and Entertainment.
UA ad spend
Remarketing ad spend
Shopping’s Navratri week captures 17% of its entire season’s revenue
Shopping’s revenue was concentrated in a single week: Navratri alone accounted for 17% of the vertical’s season revenue on Android and 15% on iOS, nearly double what an even split across 11 weeks would yield. The Diwali week ranked among the lowest-revenue weeks of the season on both platforms.
Finance’s revenue is concentrated at the opposite end of the calendar. Its biggest week landed the week after Diwali, capturing 13% of the season’s Android revenue and 11% on iOS, ahead of Diwali week itself, which captured 11% on Android and 9% on iOS.
Treat festive installs as a nurture case where the real revenue window sits outside the festival itself, as with Shopping’s Navratri peak, and sustain engagement where revenue keeps building afterward, as with Finance.
IAP Revenue share per platform
Shopping’s Diwali cohort pulls ahead on iOS gradually, while Finance’s gain fades by Day 30
Retention adds a different angle, though the pattern only holds on iOS. Shopping’s Diwali cohort starts out identical to a typical week at Day 1 and Day 3, then opens a gap from Day 7 onward that keeps widening, reaching 6.3% Day 30 retention against a typical 5.5%. The advantage builds gradually over the following weeks.
Finance’s iOS cohort moves the opposite way. Its gap peaks early, 13.1% Day 7 retention against a typical 11.5%, then narrows steadily, closing to 8% versus 7% by Day 30. The early lift mostly fades over the following weeks.
Android shows almost no divergence in either vertical at any point in the retention curve, confirming this is a platform-specific pattern, present from Day 7 onward.
Match engagement timing to how a retention advantage builds: nurture cohorts well past install, where the gain compounds over time, as with Shopping, and prioritize the first week, where the gain is front-loaded, as with Finance.
Average Retention Rate per Vertical
30% of Food & Drink’s iOS installers make a purchase within 30 days
Food & Drink converts more of its installers into paying customers than any other vertical this season, by a wide margin. Its iOS conversion rate climbs from 29% in August to 30% in October, already the highest starting point of any category and still rising into the festive season. That climb aligns with a documented surge in Indian food delivery volumes around Diwali 2025. Food delivery also carries inherently high purchase intent. Users open the app already looking to order, which explains why the category converts more reliably than browsing-driven verticals regardless of season. Android moves the opposite way over the same stretch, easing from 13% to 12%, though the vertical overall remains the strongest converter by a wide margin.
Shopping and Travel show a different shape: their strongest converting cohorts arrived in September, not October. 7.0% of Shopping’s Android installers from September went on to purchase within 30 days, easing to 6.8% in October, while Travel’s iOS rate falls from 15% to 13% over the same period, both consistent with the earlier finding that these verticals’ highest-intent activity happens before Diwali.
Finance moves in the opposite direction to Shopping and Travel: its October installers convert at 3% on Android and 7% on iOS, the best of any month this season. That strength aligns with Dhanteras-driven gold investment activity, a well-documented festive pattern in which Indian consumers turn to digital gold-buying platforms ahead of the holiday, alongside Chhath Puja-adjacent financial activity later in the month.
Weigh conversion strength against install volume when setting the budget: pursue installers regardless of timing when conversion stays reliably strong, as with Food & Drink, and prioritize the cohort month that converts best, as with Finance’s October or Shopping and Travel’s September.
Install-to-purchase conversion rate (30-day)
Travel’s fraud rate follows a consistent seasonal pattern across platforms
Travel’s fraud rate holds steady across the entire season on both platforms, near 4% on iOS and closer to 26% at its peak on Android. That consistency holds across all 11 weeks, independent of the festive calendar.
Finance’s own rate stays consistently high throughout the season, 18% to 23% on Android, and eases into Diwali week itself, down 12% on Android and 25% on iOS.
Gaming has the lowest and most stable fraud profile of any vertical, with 1% to 3% on Android all season, and a fraud mix that barely shifts even at Diwali. On Android, bots account for 96% of fraud both before and during the festival.
Shopping’s Android fraud rate barely moves at Diwali, but its composition shifts underneath it: CTIT anomalies, a signature often tied to attribution manipulation, more than double their share, from 5% to 12%, while bots’ own share falls from 75% to 66%.
Concentrate verification resources where risk holds steady and elevated regardless of the calendar, as with Android for Travel and Finance, and track composition shifts alongside the topline rate where the mix itself can move, as with Shopping.
Install fraud rate
Fraud type breakdown by platform
Shopping and Travel's highest-converting cohorts arrived during Navratri, not Diwali. Test shifting UA and remarketing budget into that window for these two verticals ahead of the festival's traditional peak.
Some of the strongest windows in this data sit outside the festival day itself. Finance's revenue, remarketing spend, and retention all peaked in the days after Diwali, tied to Chhath Puja. Consider whether other verticals have a similar post-peak window worth planning around.
Ad spend moves differently across verticals during the festive window. Some dip and recover, some build steadily, some peak right at Diwali and fade. Review whether spend timing aligns with each vertical's shape.
Fraud risk varies far more by vertical than by platform. Gaming stays consistently low throughout the season, while Travel and Finance carry elevated rates, not just around Diwali. Evaluate whether verification resources are matched to where risk actually concentrates, not treated as a single blanket policy
Food & Drink converted installers reliably regardless of when they arrived, while Shopping and Travel's September cohorts outperformed October's. Worth factoring a vertical's conversion rate into budget decisions, not just its raw install numbers.
