Women users are increasingly becoming the driving force behind urban India’s digital attention economy, spending significantly more time than men across several high-engagement categories, according to the latest India Digital Behaviour Report 2025-26 released jointly by Internet And Mobile Association of India and VTION.
The report, based on passive behavioural data collected from over 100,000 consented smartphones representing more than 407 million urban Indians, highlights a major shift in how digital consumption patterns are evolving across gender, geography and age groups.
One of the report’s strongest findings shows that women users are now spending substantially more time than men on commerce and entertainment platforms, categories directly linked to purchase behaviour and digital attention.
In entertainment, urban women spend an average of 82.4 minutes per day, with women in the 25–34 age group reaching as high as 86.3 minutes daily. The gap becomes even sharper in e-commerce and quick commerce, where urban women aged 25–34 in mega cities spend 35.2 minutes per day compared to 24.8 minutes for men in the same demographic, reflecting nearly 42% higher engagement.
The report positions women not just as consumers, but as one of the biggest behavioural drivers shaping platform engagement, commerce discovery and digital attention in urban India.
Alongside this shift, the study also found that AI applications are rapidly becoming a mainstream daily habit among premium urban users. AI apps recorded over 100% growth between April 2025 and March 2026, with users spending an average of 11.3 minutes per active day on AI platforms.
The adoption is currently concentrated among urban users aged 18–34 and higher-income households, signalling how conversational AI is increasingly influencing product discovery and online search behaviour. According to the report, users are now beginning to consult AI tools before opening traditional search engines or e-commerce platforms.
The report further highlights how different age groups are shaping different parts of India’s digital ecosystem. Urban users aged 18–24 continue to dominate social media consumption, spending an average of 120 minutes daily compared to the overall category average of 97.9 minutes. Meanwhile, consumers aged 35 and above remain the strongest audience segment for entertainment content, averaging 77–78 minutes per day.
Another notable finding is the stabilisation of UPI behaviour across income groups. The study found that payment app engagement patterns now remain almost identical across higher, middle and lower-income urban households, indicating that digital payments have moved beyond adoption and become deeply embedded in everyday behaviour.
The India Digital Behaviour Report 2025-26 is based entirely on privacy-compliant behavioural measurement sourced directly from active app usage data through VTION’s opt-in smartphone panel.
