Best of Times, Worst of Times: The Many (80%) and The Money (20%) of the Indian Consumer landscape.: India Emerging Consumer

Research evidence excerpt

Best of Times, Worst of Times: The Many (80%) and The Money (20%) of the Indian Consumer landscape.: India Emerging Consumer

17 July 2026

India Emerging Consumer

Best of Times, Worst of Times: The Many (80%) and The Money

(20%) of the Indian Consumer landscape.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times". The famous opening line of Charles Dickens' Jignanshu Gor

+91 226 842 1494 'A Tale of Two Cities' captures a period of contradiction: the French aristocracy indulging in

jignanshu.gor@bernsteinsg.com opulence and privilege, the peasantry experiencing poverty and oppression. While 2026 is

thankfully not 18th century France, shifting class dynamics remain more topical than ever, from

Parth Shah the US K-shaped economy to the squeezed Chinese middle class. In this note, we examine why

+91 226 842 1464

parth.shah@bernsteinsg.com only top-20% Indians are driving most of the Indian consumption landscape.

India’s consumption growth is showing anti-K characteristics (Exhibit 3). Indian govt.

data shows that share of lower income deciles in consumption has increased in the overall

pie from F12 to F24. This would mean that the consumption growth is broad based - coming

across income fractiles. Within this, broadly, the share of food in total expenditure for rural

cohorts has reduced substantially over the last decade (Exhibit 4).

Top-20% of Indian consumer still represent ~40% of all India spending. With the

Top-5% representing ~15% of all spending. This share has reduced meaningfully from F12,

when it was ~45% and ~20% respectively (Exhibit 7). Even more interestingly, while top2-

fractiles have lost share, the shift has not happened in the next decile of population, but has

been distributed almost equally across the next ~7 deciles. This means that while the %-