India's online consumer spending expected to reach $300 Bn by 2030: Elevation Capital report

Elevation Capital today announced the launch of its report “What If…We Win? Unlocking The India Consumer Tech Opportunity.” The report addresses multiple whitespaces for large, scalable tech-enabled consumer businesses that founders can build in India. The country’s online consumer spending is expected to reach $300 Bn by 2030, creating massive value-creation opportunities for founders building new consumer marketplaces, businesses catering to India’s wealthy, new-age D2C brands tapping discretionary categories, and social & content platforms that leverage newer monetization strategies.

In a joint statement, Mukul Arora, Co-managing Partner and Mayank Khanduja, Partner, who leads Elevation’s Consumer Tech investments, said, “Of late, India’s startup ecosystem has started questioning the viability of delivering new high-quality businesses in the consumer tech space. With all our conviction, we say yes, these businesses can be built. This is not just because we have partnered with multiple category winners in the past consumer tech waves but because all markers today strengthen our conviction. Our consumer tech portfolio and 100+ consumer tech founders we meet every month show that the market is only getting deeper. With more disposable income in the hands of the consumer, large share of the new revenue and profit pools would accrue to the consumer tech companies.”

The report presents five data and research-backed theses covering large value-creation opportunities for founders to build large, enduring companies.

Indian Media Platforms Will Monetize Users Directly At Scale:

While horizontal social platforms command more than 50% of the $8Bn Indian digital ads market, emerging marketplaces and e-commerce platforms such as Amazon India, Swiggy, Nykaa, and Meesho have also entered the ads business, cornering nearly 15% of this pie..

Monetization strategies beyond digital ads are gaining momentum among Indian consumer apps. Social and content platforms like Moj, Sri Mandir, Seekho, STAGE, FRND, and AstroTalk have scaled on the back of newer direct forms of user monetization, including subscriptions, microtransactions, and digital services.

India’s top 2% are a $100 Bn opportunity:

India’s top 5Mn households (~2%) hold more than 50% of country’s wealth and also contribute disproportionately to consumption. Over the next decade, their discretionary spend pool will climb to $100Bn.

Pets ($7 Bn opportunity), Premium Leisure Travel ($20 Bn opportunity), Home Rentals ($8 Bn opportunity), and Premium Healthcare ($10 Bn opportunity) are some of the themes founders can capitalize on when building for this audience, which has unique needs and desires premium quality.

Many Massive Marketplaces Are Waiting To Be Built:

Online consumer marketplaces will shape India’s consumption across various categories, including shopping, travel, grocery, mobility, health, education, local services, and real estate.

Platform businesses capture 80% of India’s online consumer spends, estimated to reach $300Bn by 2030.

Marketplaces that solve for secondary home transactions ($30bn opportunity) through a ‘Spinny’ model, vertical platforms for home furnishing ($23bn opportunity) and novel marketplaces that build for new consumer archetypes like the GenZ and Bharat consumers are some emerging opportunities awaiting founders

New-Age Consumer Brands Will Create $50 Bn Of Listed M-Cap

The combined revenue of new-age consumer brands in India today stands at $5.6bn and continues to scale at a rapid clip.

India will have 300+ new-age brands surpassing the ₹100 Cr revenue mark in the next three years as several enablers for D2C brand-building converge.

25-30 breakout consumer brands across categories like home, footwear, durables, QSR, toys, etc., will account for a listed market cap of ~$50bn by 2030.

Offline-Dominant Models Will Unlock Deep Customer Value Across Education, Healthcare and Consumer Brands

Some of the successful new-age consumer brands have also leveraged offline retail for growth, including Mamaearth, Lenskart, and boAt.

In Education, test prep, upskilling and pre-school are categories where an offline-dominant approach is a superior model to pure online learning.

Fertility, women and child, oncology, dermatology, diagnostics and pain management are a few single-specialty offline-dominant categories in healthcare where deep customer value can be unlocked.