Surabhi Prasad, Business Today
Print Edition: 01 Feb, 2026

The last two years—2024 and, more notably, 2025—saw a wave of protests by a new generation of students and young professionals looking for political change, better economic conditions and more climate awareness across countries, including Bangladesh, Nepal, Indonesia and the Maldives.

But beyond these uprisings, Gen Z, the term used to describe those born in late 1990s to the early part of the 2010s and currently aged around 13-29 years, are not only questioning but also bringing forth changes in societal norms and economic behaviour. It’s not just a generation gap!

Gen Z are digital natives. They are tech savvy, have grown up with Internet in their homes, iPads as their support system, social media as a constant companion and take digital payments, online and quick commerce for granted. They tend to be night owls, the real gigsters, at home with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, and with a lingo—cap, salty, suss and tea—that make others scratch their heads.

They also have newer challenges—rising unemployment, an uncertain economic environment, the rise of AI that has put a question mark on the future of work, climate change that is turning more real by the day, and skyrocketing real estate prices that mean a dream home could remain just a dream. Still, they are the rising consumer force who, over the next decade, are poised to become the largest chunk of the labour force and the focus of most companies.

For a country like India that is still young, Gen Z will soon be the economic force to reckon with. A recent report by not-for-profit think tank People Research on India’s Consumer Economy (PRICE) estimates that as of 2025, nearly one in five young individuals globally lives in India. “This is a formidable 420-million strong force, constituting approximately 29% of the nation’s total population, and made up of individuals aged between 15 and 29 as defined by India’s National Youth Policy (2014),” it said.

Labour sociologist Ellina Samantroy, Fellow at the V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, says India’s expanding Gen Z or youth workforce offers a significant opportunity for the country to reap the demographic dividend. As per the recent Periodic Labour Force Survey 2023-24, around 46.5% of the labour force is in the 15-29 age group. “There has been an increase in labour force participation in this age group from 42% during 2021-22. One can see the economic growth potential of this cohort,” she says.

However, with transitions and emerging opportunities in the world of work, it is important to harness the potential of this population cohort with adequate access to education and skilling, she says.

Devangshu Dutta, founder and chief executive of Third Eyesight, a boutique management consulting firm focused on the retail and consumer products ecosystem, says Indian Gen Z consumers are not a uniform cohort.

“A critical issue in India is the coexistence of aspiration and constraint, and India’s Gen Z are shaped by a mix of high digital exposure and wide economic disparity. While they are ambitious and globally aware, their purchasing power varies sharply across segments and locations,” he says.

Further, urban, higher-income Gen Z display global consumption behaviours such as brand experimentation, social commerce and premium aspiration, whereas a large proportion of Gen Z in Tier II, Tier III and rural India is highly value-driven and necessity-led, while drawing their inspiration from global and national sources. He also points out that unlike Millennials, Indian Gen Z are also entering the workforce in a more uncertain economic environment, making price sensitivity, smaller pack sizes and flexible payment options important. “Employment patterns such as informal jobs, gig work and delayed income stability are influencing consumption cycles and brand loyalty,” he says. There is a strong preference for digital discovery, vernacular content and peer-led recommendations, with trust built through community and relevance rather than legacy brand status.

Rising aspirations of Indian households and changes in consumption pattern with a marked move from essentials to more premium products have been well documented, most recently in Household Consumption Expenditure Surveys. But more granular, individual-level data from PRICE shows marked changes in education levels and behaviour of Gen Z and other cohorts such as Millennials (those aged between 30 and 45), Gen X (aged 45-60) and Baby Boomers (60+). A 2024 PRICE ICE 360 Survey of 8,200 respondents (18–70 years) in 25 major cities showed that Gen Z is the most educated cohort, spends the most time browsing the Internet and is more engaged with e-commerce and paid digital services.

Multinational and domestic companies are also now waking up to the Gen Z wave and are realising that they need to review strategies to gain the attention and loyalty of Gen Z as consumers and workers.

“Fashion, beauty and personal care, food and beverages, and mobile and consumer electronics are at the forefront of change in India,” says Dutta. Responding to Gen Z requirements, companies are designing products at accessible price points, expanding entry-level ranges and leveraging sachetisation and subscription models. Brands are investing more in regional languages, local influencers and platforms such as short-video and social commerce channels that resonate with young Indian consumers, he says.

But this process is still at a nascent stage, and many companies and analysts are still trying to assess this generation.

For the 34th Anniversary Issue, we at Business Today decided to decode what Gen Z is truly about, what influences them the most, what they aspire to purchase, what they can afford and what this means for India Inc. Over the course of the last few months, our newsroom saw animated discussions as senior editors sat down with younger colleagues to discuss lifestyle choices, brand loyalties and career ambitions, as we drafted an issue brief and a potential survey.

We then got in touch with PRICE, which worked with us on our survey objectives and tweaked the questionnaire. The result—a first-of-its-kind exercise where PRICE surveyed 4,311 Gen Z respondents, who are now entering the workforce with an income of their own, residing in metros and Tier II cities. The survey covered gender, education, employment status, personal income and household income classes. The main focus was urban, educated Gen-Z who has the income to be a strong consumer.

The research examined consumption behaviour across discretionary and essential categories, savings and credit attitudes, digital influence, brand loyalty, aspirations, and future spending intent.

And the results are indeed, surprising! The survey reveals that traditional consumption models that were built around age-based life stages, linear career progression and early credit adoption no longer hold for Gen Z. “This cohort’s behaviour reflects early exposure to economic shocks, greater career volatility and a redefinition of success away from speed toward resilience,” it underlines.

For businesses, misreading delayed demand as permanent weakness risks underinvestment just as Gen Z approaches its next consumption inflection, it warns. For financial services, premature credit push without trust-building will underperform. For consumer brands, price-led acquisition without quality consistency will fail to convert into lifetime value.

Delve into this issue where BT brings to you the in-depth findings of the survey and explains what this means for companies as they vie for a share of this growing consumer segment. Gen Z is not just about rizz and drip, it is giving the main character energy as they come of age.

(Published in Business Today, issue dated 1 February 2026)

Remember the year 2000? After Y2K passed safely, that year some optimistic analysts predicted that India’s modern retail chains would reach 20 per cent market share by 2015. Two years after that supposed watershed, another firm declared that modern retail will be at around that level in 2020 – but wait! – only in the top 9 cities in the country. Don’t hold your breath: India surprises; constantly. As many have noted, “predictions are tough, especially about the future!” What we can do is reflect on some of this year’s developments that could play out over the coming year.

In many minds 2019 may be the Year of the Recession, plagued by discounting, but that demand slowdown has brewing for some time now. However, there’s another under-appreciated factor that has been playing out: while small, independent retailers can flex their business investments with variations in demand, modern retail chains need to spread the business throughout the year in order to meet fixed expenses and to manage margins more consistently.

To reduce dependence on festive demand, retailers like Big Bazaar and Reliance have been inventing shopping events like Sabse Sasta Din (Cheapest Day), Sabse Sachi Sale (Most Authentic Sale), Republic Day / 3-Day sale, Independence Day shopping and more for the last few years. In ecommerce, there’s the Amazon’s Freedom Sale, Prime Day, and Great India Festival, and Flipkart’s Big Billion Day Sale. This year retailers and brands went overboard with Black Friday sale, a shopping-event concept from the 1950s in the USA linked to a harvest celebration marked by European colonisers of North America. (The fact that Black Friday has a totally different connotation in India since the terrorist bombings in Bombay in 1993 seems to have completely escaped the attention of brands, retailers and advertising agencies.) Be that as it may, we can only expect more such invented and imported events to pepper the retail calendar, to drive footfall and sales. The consumer has been successfully converted to a value-seeking man-eater fed on a diet of deals and discounts. With no big-bang economic stimuli domestically and a sputtering global economy, we should just get used to the idea of not fireworks but slow-burning oil lamps and sprinklings of flowers and colour through the year. Retailers will just have to work that much harder to keep the lamps from sputtering.

Ecommerce companies have been in operating for 20 years now, but the Indian consumer still mostly prefers a hands-on experience. The lack of trust is a huge factor, built on the back of inconsistency of products and services. The one segment that has been receiving a lot of love, attention and money this year (and will grow in 2020) is food and grocery, since it is the largest chunk of the consumption basket. Beyond the incumbents – Grofers, Big Basket, MilkBasket and the likes – now Walmart-Flipkart and Amazon are going hard at it, and Reliance has also jumped in. Remember, though, that selling groceries online is as old as the first dot-com boom in India. E-grocers still struggle to create a habit among their customers that would give them regular and remunerative transactions, and they also need to tackle supply-side challenges. Average transactions remain small, demand remains fragmented, and supply chain issues continue to be troublesome. Most e-grocers are ending up depending on a relatively narrow band of consumers in a handful of cities.  The generation that is comfortable with an ever-present screen is not yet large enough to tilt the scales towards non-store shopping and convenience isn’t the biggest driver for the rest, so, for a while it’ll remain a bumpy, painful, unprofitable road.

Where we will see rapid pick-up is social commerce, both in terms of referral networks as well as using social networks to create niche entrepreneurial businesses – 2020 should be a good year for social commerce, including a mix of online platforms, social media apps as well as offline community markets. However, western or East Asia models won’t be replicated as the Indian market is significantly lower in average incomes, and way more fragmented.

As a closing thought, I’ll mention a sector that I’ve been involved with (for far too long): fashion. In the last 8-10 decades, globally fashion has become an industry living off artificially-generated expiry dates. A challenge that I have extended to many in the industry, and this year publicly at a conference: if consumption falls to half in the next five years, and you still have to run a profitable business (obviously!), how would you do it? Plenty of clues lie in India – we epitomise the future consumers; frugal, value-seeking, wanting the latest and the best but not fearful about missing out the newest design, because it will just be there a few weeks later at a discount. If you can crack that customer base and turn a profit, you would be well set for the next decade or so.

(Published as a year-end perspective in the Financial Express.)