MAM
Connected consumers in India plan to spend 42% more than last year: InMobi
Mumbai: Indians are all set to welcome the festive season with a larger online shopping budget compared to last year, despite the initial few tough months this year. Almost 68 per cent of the respondents plan to shop online this festive season, with 43 per cent of Indians increasing their online shopping budgets this year, and parallelly, 39 per cent decreasing their offline shopping budgets, according to the new report launched by InMobi on Wednesday.
The report titled ‘Decoding the 2021 Festive Shopper’ reveals that connected consumers in India plan to spend Rs 21,230 on average, 42 per cent higher than last year. Clothing and accessories, personal-use gadgets, and home appliances top the charts as the most popular shopping categories.
InMobi surveyed over 2500 smartphone users across 80 tier 1, 2, and 3 cities and clusters in India using its consumer intelligence platform Pulse, to throw light on consumer preferences, shopping patterns, peak-shopping timelines, and device usage patterns. Additionally, one in three respondents that hail from tier 2 and 3 cities claim to be first-time online shoppers.
“The festive season always remains about larger-than-life emotions, get-togethers, and a plethora of traditions. Amongst all this constancy, mobile has emerged as the medium for connected consumers to learn, explore, communicate, and buy,” said InMobi MD for Asia Pacific Vasuta Agarwal. “Our research shows that over 60 per cent of respondents use their mobile to research, explore, or make the final purchase. This makes it extremely critical for brands to be mobile-first in their festive strategy to win the connected festive shopper this year.”
In India, the seasonal celebrations continue from the beginning of September to the end of the year, and the one thing that stays consistent throughout these four months is shopping. Almost 60 per cent of respondents in tier 1, 2, and 3 cities plan to make purchases in the period before Dussehra, defining the peak timeline for their festive shopping.
The report also reveals deeper insights on the evolving shopping patterns this year among the Bargain Hunters, Category Explorers, and Brand Lovers segments.
• 47 per cent of festive shoppers fall in the Bargain Hunters segment, as they are unsure on the categories they plan to purchase and are primarily on the hunt for attractive offers, irrespective of category.
• 39 per cent of festive shoppers fall in the Category Explorers segment as they have decided the categories that they intend to shop in but are yet to finalize the exact brand or product. They are expected to spend 20% higher than last year.
• 14 per cent are Brand Lovers as they have already made their decisions on the specific brands and the products that they will purchase. With focus on jewellery and home decor, brand lovers have the largest budgets of all the three segments.
“Over the past year, we have seen a diverse set of brands leverage InMobi’s shoppable mobile experiences and online to online/ offline commerce solutions to drive relevant engagement with connected consumers,” added Agarwal. “These solutions will play an even more significant role in the upcoming festive season as brands look to strengthen their online presence and drive growth.”
AD Agencies
Abhay Duggal joins JioStar as director of Hindi GEC ad sales
The streaming giant brings in a seasoned revenue hand as the battle for Hindi television advertising heats up
MUMBAI: Abhay Duggal has a new desk, and JioStar has a new weapon. The media and entertainment veteran has joined JioStar as director of entertainment ad sales for Hindi general entertainment channels, adding 17 years of hard-won revenue experience to one of India’s most powerful broadcasting operations.
Duggal is no stranger to big portfolios or bruising markets. Before joining JioStar, he spent a brief stint at Republic World as deputy general manager and north regional head for ad sales. Before that, he put in three years at Enterr10 Television, where he ran the north region for Dangal TV and Dangal 2, two of India’s leading free-to-air Hindi channels. The north alone accounted for more than 50 per cent of total channel revenue on his watch, a number that tends to get attention in any sales meeting.
His longest stint was at Zee Entertainment Enterprises, where he spent over six years rising to associate director of sales. There he commanded the Hindi movies cluster across seven channels, owned more than half of north India’s revenue across flagship properties including Zee TV and &TV, and closed marquee sponsorships across the Indian Premier League, Zee Rishtey Awards and Dance India Dance. He also handled monetisation for the English movies and entertainment cluster and the global news channel WION, a portfolio that would stretch most sales teams twice his size.
Earlier in his career Duggal closed what was then a Rs 3 crore single deal at Reliance Broadcast Network, one of the largest in Indian radio at the time, before that he helped launch and monetise JAINHITS, India’s first HITS-based cable and satellite platform.
His edge, by his own account, lies in marrying data and instinct: translating audience trends, inventory signals and client demands into long-term partnerships built on cost-per-rating-point discipline rather than short-term deal chasing. In a media landscape being reshaped by streaming, fragmented attention and AI-driven advertising, that kind of rigour is increasingly rare and increasingly valuable.
JioStar, which blends the scale of Reliance’s Jio platform with the content firepower of Star, is doubling down on its advertising business at precisely the moment the Hindi GEC market is getting more competitive. Bringing in someone who has spent nearly two decades doing exactly this, across some of India’s most watched channels, is a pointed statement of intent. Duggal has spent his career turning audiences into revenue. JioStar is clearly betting he can do it again, and bigger.
