India’s festive online shoppers bought more often this year. They spent less each time.
Festive online sales reached about ₹1,40,800 crore over 34 sale days until 9 November, according to Datum Intelligence’s Festive Barometer 2026. That is up 17 per cent from ₹1,20,000 crore in 2025. The total fell ₹9,200 crore to ₹14,200 crore short of the ₹1,50,000 crore to ₹1,55,000 crore that the firm’s own September outlook had expected. The report said it was the slowest growth since 2023.
The gains came from more buyers and later weeks, the report found. “Growth now comes from reach and frequency; the big-ticket basket is shrinking,” it said. It added: “Plans built on the opening day and big tickets will under-deliver; the money is in smaller towns and in the weeks before Diwali.”
Baskets shrank, the report said. Online card transactions rose 7 per cent over the 32 sale days, according to RBI daily data cited in the report. Card value fell 6 per cent. The average card payment dropped 13 per cent to about ₹5,970 from ₹6,830. “Smaller payments explain the whole value gap,” the report said.
The report noted that the 2025 season opened with the GST rate cut, which lifted big-ticket sales. This year had no such boost, and pricier phones sold fewer units.
Phones lost 10 percentage points of share. Mobiles accounted for 35 per cent of festive online sales in 2025. Online phone units fell by a quarter to a third in the opening days. Average phone prices rose 16 per cent to 19 per cent as memory costs fed through. Phone sales value fell about 15 per cent, leaving mobiles at about a quarter of sales. Datum estimates that this cost the season 5 percentage points of growth. Everything else grew about 35 per cent. Without the phone drop, the report said, the season would have grown about 22 per cent, not 17 per cent. The outlook had expected mobiles’ share to fall to 29.8 per cent.
A late Diwali moved the whole season 19 days later, the report said. A leap month pushed Diwali to 8 November. September had no sale days at all, against eight a year earlier.
The opening accounted for a third of the season. Early access added ₹11,000 crore and week one ₹37,000 crore, together accounting for 34 per cent of the season. Sales then slowed to ₹25,700 crore in week two and ₹24,100 crore in week three. The days before Dhanteras did the rest of the catching up. This year’s sales surpassed the total for the 2025 season on the 27th sale day.
The sale itself gave spending a smaller lift than before, the report found. Before the sales, card payments at online retailers averaged ₹3,830 crore a day, 26 per cent above 2025. Week one lifted card spending to 1.4 times the ordinary daily level, against 1.9 times in 2025. “The sale now adds a smaller premium to a bigger everyday market,” the report said.
Demand widened even as baskets shrank. Citing company figures, the report said Flipkart’s orders, units and buyers grew 20 per cent to 22 per cent during its Big Billion Days. About 60 per cent of Flipkart’s buyers came from tier-II and smaller towns. Amazon doubled the units ordered in the first 12 hours of its sale. Of its 440 million visits by 9 October, 72 per cent came from beyond the top nine metros. Meesho’s first-day orders rose 75 per cent.
Deals leaned on bank offers, cashback and EMIs rather than deeper price cuts, the report said. One in two Amazon shoppers used EMIs in the first 12 hours. Appliance makers delayed price increases until after the season. Searches for price trackers rose 130 per cent to 170 per cent.
Quick commerce is now a festive channel, the report said. It accounted for about 16 per cent of the season, up from 12 per cent, with orders of ₹520 to ₹660. India had 7,153 dark stores, up 34 per cent. According to data from Unicommerce, GoKwik and ClickPost, quick commerce orders rose 75 per cent and brand website orders rose 27 per cent to 30 per cent. Marketplace orders rose 8 per cent.
Beyond online sales, the report also tracked UPI. Over the four days from the eve of Dhanteras to Diwali, UPI transaction value rose 38 per cent to ₹4.99 lakh crore. Transactions rose 28 per cent to 3,748 million. The report cautioned that these figures cover every UPI payment, including transfers between people and payments in shops. They do not measure online sales alone.
For 2027, the report advises brands to spend across the season, not on day one. The last 11 days brought in more card value than week one. The daily sales rate of ₹4,140 crore was close to 2025’s ₹4,000 crore.
Its bottom line: “The festival reached further and spent less per order.”
