A lot of people have been doing listicles on Sub-stack lately so I thought of giving it a shot. Here I will be enlisting 5 graphs that highlight some interesting aspects from the lives of Indians. It’s not your usual listicle though: no UPI growth charts, no internet adoption rates etc etc. They are completely random. There’s no rhyme or reason behind these graphs. They’re here because they caught my fancy and that’s it. So sit back and enjoy, you might find some of them surprising.
Cine-MA! : Much has been talked about India’s love for films. The nation’s obsession with the silver screen is only second to cricket. But this seems to be changing and changing fast. Ormax, the leading consulting firm in media and entertainment industry, has tried to capture this phenomenon in its Ormax Cine Sense: 2023 report.
The Report found that not more than 4% of adult Indian population falls under the ‘regular movie-goer category’ (3 or more films per year). Before pandemic, the number was marginally up by a percent or two. These numbers throw a wrench at the general perception of movie-going as a mass phenomenon. Amongst the movie-going audience this number is further fragmented by separate categories. Down below is a much more detailed picture of the movie-going audience.
Image source: Ormax The general response to this fact is mostly duh. It isn’t a surprise, people argue, because of great content on OTT and the high prices of tickets. But there’s nuance here. OTT hasn’t been able to deter younger audience from visiting the movie halls. The effect seems larger on older age groups. In fact, younger audience uses movie-going as a socialising venue. As for ticket pricing, there seems to be a large divergence in the audience’s willingness to spend based on the movie. If it’s an event film, the price of a ticket seems to have a marginal impact on the audience. But for tickets of regular films, Rs 100 seems to be the laxman-rekha beyond which audience interest drops below 50%. The graph below shows this in great detail.
Image source: Ormax Time to shop: Buying on an e-commerce platform is a living reality for a large chunk of us. The sector is estimated to be worth over $55 Bn in Gross Merchandise Value in 2021. In this sector, Amazon is one of the giants. So what exactly do Indians buy from Amazon? Here’s the list of the top selling items from Amazon. For the lazy ones amongst you, here’s a screen-grab of the top 3 items in the list.
Source: Amazon India It was a surprising find for me. I would’ve never guessed that smartwatches would top the list. On researching more about this, I realised that this phenomenon is not just restricted to Amazon. Indians are taking up smartwatches in droves. As per International Data Corporation’s (IDC) report, smartwatch market in India will cross 50 million units in 2023, up from 30.7 million in 2022. The sector is witnessing a massive growth. Just look at the numbers down below.
Source: IDC What exactly is driving this phenomenon? Is it a COVID-induced health scare?Could be. Or is it just a fad? Whatever the reason may be, local companies are laughing their way to the bank. The likes of Boat, Fire – Boltt, Noise dominate the market and are helping quench Indian’s thirst for smartwatches.
Wander-lust: That Indians love to travel is no secret. But what is the scale of it? We turn to statistics from the Indian govt to find that. The number of Indian nationals’ departures from India b/w the period of 2001-2021 has steadily grown at a CAGR of roughly 5%. This growth in foreign travellers is decent. But the real growth is being witnessed in the amount of money Indians like to spend on these foreign travels.
Source: Money Control From FY 2014-15 to the present, Indians’ have increased their spending on foreign travel close to 104,000 percent. Now that’s something. Maybe that’s why the Indian govt want to tax these spends.
Tomato-flation: Inflation has been at the centre of our attention for several months now. Earlier it was a general phenomenon across all sectors. Now it’s specific to tomatoes. Though this year the prices have skyrocketed, July has been a sour spot for tomatoes for over a decade now. What explains this? Tomatoes in the summer are mostly sourced from Maharashtra, Andhra and parts of Karnataka. But their combined output is comparatively small, thus causing a supply shortage.
Source: Twitter Influencing: India’s influencer market is booming and how. While the top influencers are your usual suspects, its the market size that is eye-popping to me. Some see this rise due to Indian’s love for shopping and how influencers are leveraging that for their growth. Not everyone is happy though. What do you think of it? Drop your thoughts in the comment section below.
Source: Statista
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Hi Suresh! Thank you for your comment.
It’s an interesting insight. I’m sure there must be a lot of other micro level data sets that I might have missed.
Just to clarify though, Ormax’s research conclusions were based on a macro level & included the impact of Covid. If you find NFHS data for the same, do share it with me. Would love to add to the piece.
the data on cinema is interesting but there is more nuance to it especially in AP and TN. NFHS 2015-16 highlights that there are at least 50% moviegoers per month in cities like Chennai and Bengaluru. (https://www.livemint.com/industry/media/the-north-south-filmy-divide-1568101540696.html)