e-commerce
Product Videos boost sales on Snapdeal – 30% rise in sales for listings with videos; small sellers gain
MUMBAI: Snapdeal, India’s leading online marketplace, has added a wide range of product videos on its app. Placed under ‘SD TV’, the ten-second short videos showcase key features and utility of the featured products.
Snapdeal is focused on the needs of value-conscious buyers in India. Over the past two years, it has vastly expanded the range of value-priced merchandize, including popular regional brands and seller-branded products, which directly fulfill the price & functionality needs of the audience.
To help buyers make an engaging and informed buying decision for these products, Snapdeal has launched videos of these products, which helps users get access to high-quality visuals of the product from all angles. More than 75% of Snapdeal’s buyers are from Tier 2 & 3 cities and the product videos help overcome language and literacy barriers.
“We have created a huge & growing library of short-format videos to help users get an enhanced idea about the functionality of a product, which is quite important given that a significant number of products that we sell may be lesser known seller-brands or a product that has consumer has never seen before,” said a Snapdeal spokesperson.
The videos also help buyers discover new and interesting products, which is aligned with Snapdeal’s positioning to provide a fun and engaging discovery-led online experience for its users.
“Videos have helped us drive sales. Ten-second videos of products are far more captivating and help buyers to make decisions faster than static pictures of the products concerned,” added Snapdeal spokesperson. The product videos have boosted sales of featured products by an average of 30%.
The product videos are a boon for seller brands given that they cannot afford to showcase their products in expensive advertisements in print and on TV. Snapdeal not only provides a platform for them to showcase their products better but also shoots the videos for them.
The market for value-priced merchandize is worth nearly USD 163 billion and only about 1-2% of this is online, compared to the 10-40% online penetration for branded products like mobiles, electronics, etc.
Popular products include USB air coolers, 14-in-1 choppers, compact shoe racks, mobile phone stand with a magnifier for the bigger screen experience etc.
More than 70 million users visit Snapdeal every month to browse through and buy from nearly 200 million SKUs listed by nearly 500,000 registered sellers. In the last two years alone, the company has seen 60,000+ new seller partners come on board adding over 50 Million new listings.
e-commerce
Visa report tracks rise of India’s affluent, experience-led spending
Affluent base doubles to 130 lakh, travel 58 per cent of elite spends.
MUMBAI: In India’s new luxury playbook, it’s less about owning more and more about living better. A new whitepaper by Visa Consulting and Analytics (VCA) maps a decisive shift in India’s affluent economy, where spending is becoming more intentional, experience-led, and closely tied to personal identity rather than pure income growth.
Titled India’s Affluent Economy 2025–2026, the report draws on a Visa-commissioned Yougov study and VisaNet data across travel, dining, retail and lifestyle categories. The headline number is hard to miss: individuals earning over Rs 10 lakh annually have nearly doubled from 69 lakh to 130 lakh, significantly expanding the country’s discretionary spending base.
But it’s not just about scale, it’s about behaviour. As consumers move up the affluence ladder, discretionary categories are taking a larger share of credit card spends, positioning cards as key enablers of premium, lifestyle-driven consumption.
The geography of wealth is shifting too. Affluence is no longer confined to metros such as Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru, with cities like Ahmedabad, Surat, Jaipur and Lucknow increasingly mirroring metro consumption patterns.
The report highlights a clear pivot from ownership to access. More than 50 per cent of affluent consumers now use cards for elite memberships, while 7 in 10 are drawn to limited-edition drops and curated collections. Increasingly, luxury is defined by seamless access be it concierge-led travel or curated dining where time saved is as valuable as money spent.
Spending patterns reinforce this shift. Among the ultra-elite, travel accounts for 58 per cent of discretionary spends, far outpacing retail and luxury combined at 28 per cent. Cross-border spending penetration stands at 63 per cent, signalling a growing global outlook among India’s affluent.
Closer home, indulgence is becoming routine. Nearly 4 in 5 affluent consumers dine at premium establishments at least three times a year, while 1 in 4 visit luxury venues more than five times annually. Dining spends are also climbing, with Rs 20,000 emerging as a new entry-level benchmark per experience and Rs 50,000 marking premium territory.
Retail, meanwhile, is becoming more selective. Three in four affluent consumers make a high-end purchase at least once a quarter, while one in four shops premium every two weeks. Luxury retail intensity is also rising, with 2 in 5 consumers spending over Rs 5 lakh annually, and a smaller but significant segment exceeding Rs 10 lakh.
Technology and wellness are carving out new roles in this ecosystem. High-end gadgets now see average spends of Rs 60,000 or more per purchase, while ultra-elite consumers are eight times more likely to visit spas and show five times higher engagement with cosmetic stores than non-affluent groups.
The broader takeaway is structural. Affluent consumers are no longer buying products, they are buying ecosystems. Integrated experiences across travel, dining, wellness and payments are becoming central to how this segment lives and spends.
As India’s affluent base expands beyond metros and aligns more closely with global consumption patterns, the real opportunity lies not just in size, but in speed. For brands, the message is clear: relevance will be defined by how early and how seamlessly, they plug into this evolving lifestyle economy.
