India’s festive season is expected to grow 25 to 29 per cent in 2026. Every point of that growth comes from more orders rather than bigger ones.
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Source: Datum Festive Barometer Study 2026.
What the Report Covers
Twelve years of history, and what changes when a season adds ₹30,000 crore without adding to the average basket.
The festive season has grown every year since 2014, and 2025 reversed a three-year slowdown at 25 per cent. 2026 is expected to hold that pace. What makes the year unusual is the composition: more households buying, buying more often, at a smaller average basket.
That changes what a good festive plan looks like. A season that grows on volume rewards availability, delivery capacity and assortment depth. A season that grows on price rewards discount depth. This season is the first kind.
The window moves too. Diwali falls on 8 November against 20 October last year, so the season opens sixteen days later and runs three days longer.
Quick commerce is built as a layer on top of the categories it sits inside, so it can be read either way without double counting.
Big Billion Days and Great Indian Festival window, ₹ crore. 2024 and 2025 restated August 2026.
Source: Datum Festive Barometer Study 2026. Festive 2014 was a single day and window lengths differ by year, so the early years are not comparable with the recent ones.
Three readings from outside Datum’s own data, all taken before the window opens.
Sources: RBI Consumer Confidence Survey, July 2026 round; company disclosures; TeamLease. Compiled in the Datum Festive Barometer Study 2026.
Key Findings
Four findings Datum publishes ahead of the season. The category mix, platform preference and the consumer survey sit in the full report.
Twelve straight years of growth, and the 2026 range holds the pace 2025 set when it reversed a three-year slowdown. Two independent builds, a shopper build and a category build, land inside the same range.
More households are expected to buy, and to buy more often, while the average basket falls. A season that grows on volume behaves differently from one that grows on price: it rewards being in stock and on time over being cheapest on the day.
Diwali falls on 8 November against 20 October last year, and the window runs 31 days against 28. That pushes the season into a different pay cycle and spreads it over more days. Neither platform has announced its dates, so the opening the report carries is a Datum estimate.
Households are spreading the same money across more, smaller orders, buying groceries and home goods where they once bought a phone. The category mix behind that shift, and the quick commerce layer inside it, are set out in full in the report.
Half of India’s online shoppers now research with an AI tool, and the brands they hear about are being recommended in conversations no analytics package reports.
Key Highlight
Asked which of six research tools they had used in the past three months, only four per cent of shoppers used none. AI chatbots came first, ahead of comparison sites, price trackers and forums.
Per cent of online shoppers, past three months, multi-select. Teal marks the two AI tools.
Source: Datum Consumer Survey, June 2026, n=6,218 online shoppers.
Adoption peaks where the money is. Sixty per cent of 35 to 44 year olds research with chatbots and 61 per cent with marketplace assistants, against 42 and 38 among 18 to 24 year olds.
Women run ahead of men on every tool on the list, 54 per cent against 48 on chatbots and 52 against 46 on marketplace assistants. The gender pages in the report find the same gap, in the same direction, at about the same size.
Geography barely registers. Adoption runs 53, 49 and 50 per cent across the three city tiers, so nothing separates a metro shopper from a tier three one here. AI research is already a national habit.
Rufus, Sahay and the general chatbots now sit between the shopper and the marketplace. A brand that reads well to a language model is being recommended in conversations that no analytics package currently reports.
How We Do It
Four steps: secondary research, primary collection, statistical modelling and validation against the market.
Existing Datum market data, company filings and disclosures, industry reports, trade associations, and government and regulator data including RBI, NPCI and RAI.
The Festive Barometer survey of 2,000 online adults, read against the 2025 wave, and the India Online Shopper Survey of 6,218 online shoppers fielded in June 2026. Plus ecosystem interviews and quick commerce scraping.
A linked workbook with a scenario switch, built two independent ways. A shopper build of buyers, frequency and basket, checked against a category build, with twenty-five reconciliation tests between them.
Reviewed with people who run the operations the forecast describes, then checked against published platform disclosures and payments data. Every figure ties back to a named sheet and cell.
The festive window runs from the opening of Big Billion Days and the Great Indian Festival to Diwali, both dates inclusive. In 2025 it ran 23 September to 20 October, twenty-eight days. On a 9 October opening, the 2026 window runs thirty-one days to Diwali on 8 November.
GMV is gross merchandise value, before returns and cancellations. Dollar figures convert at ₹88, the rate the festive model uses. Every quick commerce rupee already sits inside the online retail total.
Source: Datum Festive Barometer Study 2026, definitions.
Read the full methodology →Book a session with the Datum team and we will take you through the full Festive Barometer: the category mix, platform preference, the quick commerce layer, the consumer survey, and the model behind every figure. Bring your questions and we will answer them against the data.
Talk to us →What to Do About It
Drawn from the planning checklist in the report.
The forecast grows on order count, so the binding constraint is units shipped. Size packing, fulfilment and last mile against orders.
The window opens sixteen days later and runs three days longer. A peak plan built on last year’s dates lands early and thins out before Diwali.
Ten minute delivery sits inside several categories at once. Counting it once, in its own line, is what keeps category shares honest.
Window lengths differ by year. A total quoted without its window will not compare cleanly with last year’s.
Report Scope
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