For decades, the Indian consumer’s aspirational journey revolved around ownership. A better television. A bigger car. A branded handbag. That playbook is being quietly rewritten.
Today, India’s most coveted purchases are increasingly ones you cannot touch. A front-row ticket to a Coldplay concert that sold out in minutes. A weekend at a curated music festival. A seat at an exclusive chef’s table. Across demographics – but especially among younger, urban, and affluent Indians – the shift from spending on goods to spending on experiences is no longer a trend to watch. It is a structural consumer reality that is already here.
India’s experience economy is estimated to reach $592 billion by 2030, and the live events market alone is already valued at INR 17,000 crore in 2025. The numbers are striking, but the behavioral shift behind them is even more significant.
India’s Experience Economy Is Large, Fast-Growing, and Still Underpenetrated
India’s experience economy spans live entertainment, travel, dining, wellness, sports, and immersive retail. Estimates put the overall opportunity at $592 billion by 2030, with the live events segment alone already valued at INR 17,000 crore in 2025, growing at a double-digit pace annually.
What makes this compelling is not just the absolute size, but the structural underpenetration:
Experiential media accounts for only 23% of India’s total media and entertainment revenues todayIndia’s per capita spending on experiences remains a fraction of what consumers in comparable emerging markets spendOver 10 lakh Indians traveled specifically for live events in the last two years, arriving from nearly 1,200 cities
A rapidly expanding middle class, rising disposable incomes, and a digitally fluent young demographic are creating the conditions for sustained long-term growth. India is not simply mirroring a global trend; it is building its own version of it, at scale and speed.
A Fundamental Shift Is Underway In How Indian Consumers Allocate Their Wallet
Where previous generations measured aspiration through ownership, today’s younger urban consumer measures it through participation. The question is no longer “what do I own?” but “what have I done, and what did it feel like?”
The data backs this up:
78% of Indian consumers say they would rather spend on experiences than products45% actively prefer meaningful real-world activities over online scrolling70% report becoming more regular customers of a brand after an experiential interactionAt Travis Scott’s Delhi concert, 100,000 tickets were sold within minutes – nearly INR 100 crore spent on a single cultural moment, almost instantaneously
Three forces are driving this shift. Experiences have become the primary currency of social identity, with concerts and festivals now serving as markers of self-expression. Digital saturation is pushing consumers toward intentional real-world engagement. And India’s creator economy, projected to exceed $1 trillion in influenced consumer spending by 2030, is actively shaping what feels aspirational and worth paying for. This is not confined to a narrow urban elite – it is increasingly visible across Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities as well.
Live Events Have Emerged As The Highest-Impact Format In The Experience Stack
Within the broader experience economy, live events occupy a unique position. They concentrate everything that makes experiences powerful – undivided attention, heightened emotion, and collective participation – into a single, time-bound moment.
The scale of demand tells its own story. Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour sold out arenas within minutes. Lollapalooza India, Sunburn, and NH7 Weekender draw audiences from across the country annually. Comedy tours by Zakir Khan and Vir Das regularly span 20+ cities and 50+ shows.
Post-event surveys across 7,450 attendees show 59% brand recall, a 55% uplift in purchase intent, and 66% of consumers reporting an improved brand perception after a live experience. Unlike every other format, live events offer something genuinely scarce – an audience with no second screen, no skip button, and no algorithmic competition.
The Experience Economy Cuts Across Far More Sectors Than Most People Realize
The experience economy is often narrowly associated with concerts and festivals. The reality is far broader, and the opportunity surface is much wider than most people appreciate.
Live Entertainment: Concerts, comedy, sports, and cultural festivals – the most visible layer, but the transformation runs much deeperTravel and Hospitality: Being redefined by consumers booking trips around specific moments – a music festival, a culinary trail, a wellness retreat – rather than destinations themselvesDining and F&B: Evolved beyond sustenance, with chef’s table experiences, themed pop-ups, and exclusive tasting menus commanding significant premiumsWellness: One of the most quietly explosive segments, with Indians increasingly spending on retreats and holistic health journeysImmersive Retail: Rewriting the rules of physical commerce – Asian Paints’ Experience Centers and Lenskart’s AR-powered virtual try-on, which has driven 20+ million app downloads, are early proof pointsSports: Emerging as a powerful new frontier, with the IPL and emerging leagues building passionate fan communities well beyond the stadium
What unites all of these is simple – people are willing to pay a meaningful premium for something that feels personal, memorable, and worth sharing.
The Most Forward-Looking Brands Are Treating Experiences As A Core Marketing Channel
For a long time, experience-led marketing was treated as a discretionary add-on. That thinking is changing rapidly. A growing number of India’s most sophisticated marketers are now treating experiences as a core part of their annual planning, with dedicated budgets and clear strategic objectives attached.
The EY-Parthenon BookMyShow CMO Survey captures this shift well. 56% of brands have already executed experience-led marketing activations in the last 12 months, and 56% of active brands expect budgets in this space to grow by more than 30% in the coming cycle. Incremental spending is being reallocated from traditional ATL media and digital marketing, signaling a genuine shift in priority rather than incremental enthusiasm.
The objectives have also evolved beyond visibility and impressions. Brands are using live moments to drive product trials, build cultural relevance, acquire high-intent customers, and generate organic social content that traditional advertising cannot replicate. RuPay, Kotak, H&M, Diageo, and Hyundai are among those that have built recurring presences at live events and are seeing measurable returns.
And The Returns On Experience-Led Marketing Are Surprisingly Strong
The business case is no longer anecdotal. Globally, 48% of brands report an ROI of between 300% and 500% from experience-led marketing programs. In India, post-event surveys consistently show strong brand lift across recall, perception, and purchase intent.
Some of the most instructive examples come from brands that have built sustained presences at live events:
Kotak delivered card-linked presales and express entry lanes across Ed Sheeran and Guns N’ Roses tours, resulting in a 5x increase in card acquisition and 72% brand recall at the Guns N’ Roses concertRuPay activated the Lolla Comfort experience at Lollapalooza India, with 61% of attendees feeling the brand enhanced their festival experience and a 55% uplift in purchase likelihoodH&M brought its Sound of Style positioning to life through an immersive fashion runway at Lollapalooza, generating 91% brand recall and a 58% uplift in purchase likelihood among engaged attendees
What these examples share is a common approach – each brand identified a specific consumer need and built their activation around solving it, rather than simply showing up for visibility.
A New Generation Of Businesses Are Being Built Around The Experience Economy
The experience economy is generating an entirely new category of businesses. Across ticketing, live entertainment, event technology, and immersive retail, a crop of companies is being built to capture this opportunity, and capital is following.
The most significant signal of investor conviction came in August 2024, when Zomato acquired Paytm’s entertainment ticketing business for INR 2,048 crore ($244 million), subsequently launching District – its dedicated going-out platform combining dining, movies, and live events. This stands as one of the largest M&A transactions the Indian experience economy has seen, and signals that horizontal consumer platforms are increasingly viewing experiences as a core strategic vertical rather than an adjacency.
BookMyShow remains India’s dominant infrastructure layer for live experiences, holding approximately 60% of the online ticketing market with over 150 million registered users. Its earlier acquisition of Townscript, a DIY event management platform, reflects a deliberate strategy to own the full stack, from large-scale live events down to smaller, community-driven experiences.
Beyond the large platforms, a new wave of businesses is emerging across the stack:
Event Technology Infrastructure: Platforms like KonfHub are building AI-powered end-to-end event management solutions, powering everything from large-scale conferences and hackathons to cultural festivals, representing the picks-and-shovels layer of the experience economyExperiential Travel: Platforms curating travel around specific cultural and lifestyle moments rather than generic itinerariesCreator-Led Experiences: Businesses monetizing India’s 80 million creators through live events, meet-and-greets, and immersive fan experiencesVenue and Infrastructure: Largely underdeveloped but critical layer, with significant opportunity outside the top four metros
The category is still early but the direction of capital is clear, and the best businesses here are still being built.
The Biggest Gaps In The Market Are Also The Biggest Opportunities
For all its momentum, India’s experience economy is still in its early innings, and the gaps are significant.
Infrastructure is the most glaring constraint. India has a severe shortage of world-class venues and festival grounds outside Mumbai and Delhi, the single biggest bottleneck to the market reaching its potential.
Geographic access is the second major gap. Demand for live experiences is clearly visible in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, but the supply of quality experiences in these markets remains thin. The appetite is there; the organized supply is not.
Measurement and attribution remain underdeveloped. Most brands still struggle to connect experience-led marketing investments to downstream business outcomes with precision, which continues to constrain CMO-level budget decisions.
Finally, India lacks enough homegrown, recurring experience IPs. The most enduring experience-led businesses globally are built around owned properties that audiences return to year after year. India has only a handful today – Sunburn, NH7 Weekender, Nykaaland – and the white space for new category-defining IPs remains wide open.
For Founders, Brands, And Investors, The Playbook Is Still Being Written
India’s experience economy is at the same inflection point that e-commerce was in the early 2010s – the direction is clear, the demand is proven, but the market is still being built out.
For founders, the opportunity lies in building what is missing – quality venues, experience-first travel platforms, creator-led live properties, and technology that connects brands to live audiences with precision.
For brands, the imperatives are clear:
Show up consistently, not opportunistically – cultural relevance is built through repeated presence, not one-off activationsDesign around solving real consumer needs rather than just achieving visibilityMeasure brand recall, purchase intent, and perception shift rather than impressions and footfall
For investors, this is one of the most structurally attractive consumer themes in India today – large, underpenetrated, and driven by demographic tailwinds that are not going away. The best businesses here are still being built.
The experience economy is not a cultural footnote – it is one of the most consequential consumer shifts India has seen in a generation. For founders, it opens up entirely new categories to build in. For brands, it demands a rethink of how attention is earned and loyalty is built. For investors, it represents a large, underpenetrated opportunity where the best businesses are still in their early innings.
India has always been a country that celebrates togetherness, ritual, and shared moments. The experience economy is simply what happens when that instinct meets rising disposable incomes, digital amplification, and a generation that would rather feel something than own something.
If you are a founder building a new-age consumer brand or consumer-tech company and are looking to raise capital or explore M&A opportunities, please reach out to udayan@loestro.com. We’d love to have a chat.
LoEstro Advisors is an investment banking firm specializing in sell-side fundraising and M&A advisory, along with a strong consulting arm. Recognized as the #1 financial advisor in education in India, we are the advisor of choice to India’s blue-chip education businesses.
Over the last six years, we have grown to be one of India’s largest (in terms of M&A transactions) homegrown boutique investment banks, with $1.5 bn+ worth of combined deals closed across education, healthcare, consumer, and technology sectors.
