The 2010s perfected the new inventions that man had been conceptualising since the late 2000s. I remember the first email that I ever sent. It was a reply to a friend who had just discovered Gmail as well. Although Gmail had started in 2004 in India, it took a few years for everyone to become familiar with it, beyond the working population.
But the 2010s were different. People already had access to mobiles, which allowed them to try new things as and when they came up. It would not be wrong to say that people were waiting for new things to try. Call it dependency or curiosity.
Tech giants, meanwhile, were brainstorming innovative solutions to common problems that people faced. Transport, communications and entertainment — there was no field that was untouched by startups.
Between 2015 and 2020 was when all the magic really happened. And that is when, I say again, we perfected technology.
Below are the growth charts for the ten major categories of startups that people used most in the last five years.
Note that the growth corresponds to 60,50,000 being the highest figure on the y-axis, which was the maximum number of coupons redeemed in any category during the period.
– Online education
– OTT (Over-the-top) subscriptions
– Ticket booking (travel)
– Car rentals
– Bike taxi
– Fantasy sports
– Online rummy
– Groceries
– Meat ordering
– Movie tickets
Udemy started in the late 2000s but the end of the 2010s marked a storm in the learning industry, with the beginning of several new platforms.
There was a 74 per cent spike in online learners in 2019. And the 2020 lockdown further increased the number of people redeeming e-learning coupons by 20 per cent.
Although OTTs were already gaining traction since the inception of Netflix in 2008, it was only halfway into the 2010s that people massively started buying subscriptions.
OTT subscribers grew by 250 per cent in 2018. This was also one of the categories where the users multiplied in the 2020 lockdown. People could only watch new movies on OTTs in 2020 and more content was produced in the form of originals by Netflix and other platforms under their own names.
OTT platforms were also the preferred medium for movie distributors to release new movies and it continues even today. This was the highest redeemed category in 2020.
Online travel booking came up as a saviour from long queues. Almost 5,00,000 people used coupons for travel booking in 2015, which kept on increasing since then. People booking tickets online increased by 100 per cent in 2019. However, travel coupons were redeemed far less in 2020 due to travel ban and the lockdown.
Less people used transportation services, online ticket booking, car rentals and bike taxis in 2020.
People shifted from buying to renting and that gave rise to many new renting services. However, the first official app that many of us heard about — Zoom Car — changed the way people commuted intercity. It made it possible to rent cars for even an hour, making it possible for a larger group of people to drive inside the city, for shorter distances even when they did not own a car.
The highest car rentals coupons were redeemed in 2019. There has been constant growth since 2015. However, a similar trend as online ticket booking was observed in 2020 when there was a drastic decline in the number of people renting cars. This could be related to the lockdown and general skepticism by people about travelling in cabs.
People got a substitute to asking for rides or borrowing bikes in the form of bike taxis, where anyone could simply hail a bike at a rate as low as Rs 15 per trip. Rapido launched this new concept, after which taxi giants like Uber and Ola also opted for the mode. The bike taxi coupons gradually increased over the years.
Introduction of Ola and Uber bike taxis caused a spike in bike-taxi users by 286 per cent.
The era of fantasy sports started in 2012 with Dream11 and that paved the way for many more such platforms. The games got bigger attention from 2017 but the highest coupon redemption happened in 2020.
It would be correct to say that the lockdown had a huge effect on the number of people who play fantasy games.
Online rummy began in India with Rummy Circle, which soon attracted eyeballs of many rummy lovers across the country with massive coupons being redeemed in the very first year itself. This also saw more growth in the last year of the decade, which is mostly because people were at home and were looking for new ways to spend time.
The number of people playing online rummy increased by 12 per cent every year for the last three years. In 2020, 5,600 new people started playing online rummy.
Buying clothes or electronics online has been around for some time but adapting to ordering groceries online took time for people. But eventually, that also increased over the years.
It was in 2020 that most coupons were being redeemed for groceries. And that was when many of the e-commerce stores began opting for grocery delivery services as well. Big Basket was the first one in this arena since it is a primarily a grocery delivery app. However, in the late 2010s, many new names like Amazon Pantry, Grofers, Jiomart, Reliance Fresh and others were added.
Ordering groceries online has been constantly growing since 2015. In 2020, the lockdown and the reliance of people on online delivery increased online grocery shopping by 12 per cent.
Meat ordering has been a hit since the time it came in. It reduced the hassle hunting for meat shops or buying them offline as deliveries happened within a few hours of placing the order. Now almost every grocery delivery app lists meat as one of the items on their website.
The highest spike in online orders of meat was in 2017 at 58 per cent. Meat orders increased by 8 per cent every year from 2019.
Online movie tickets have made life simpler for cinema enthusiasts. The additional internet handling fees is not stopping movie buffs from using an app like BookMyShow to book movie tickets.
BookMyShow started in 2007 and became a major name in booking online movie tickets. But soon all other payments apps and wallets offered their own movie booking solution to consumers. This led to more people using the service.
The highest movie coupons were redeemed in 2019. The number went down by 12 per cent in 2020 because theatres shut down and no new movies hit the big screens due to Covid-19. The number however floated due to online concerts and shows.
2020 has increased users in categories like e-learning. This will continue to see growth in the coming years as well since people are now habituated to it. Other categories like bike taxi, movie tickets and online games will see growth as well.
Categories that grew during lockdown: Fantasy sports, OTTs, rummy, bike taxi, groceries, meat ordering, online education.
Categories that decreased during lockdown: Car rentals, travel, and movies went down the same year.
All the data mentioned in the article is derived from GrabOn to give you an idea of how coupons played a role in consumer’s lives. All the stats and predictions are pertaining to GrabOn’s data.
GrabOn started in 2015 and soon bagged a dominant space in the Indian market. With coupons on all types of products, the portal attracted millions of users right from the first year, who have been increasing ever since. Now, GrabOn is trusted by millions of users across the country for their saving needs on online shopping.
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