There are many Indias within India, and each India spends differently. If Mumbai is a city of extremes, NCR has a lot of high-spending households. Bengaluru and Hyderabad have pockets of affluence, while Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Chennai are more balanced. 

In this essay, the first in our series of explorations of seven Tier I cities in India, we decode all this and more. 

We have analysed the spending habits of different consumer segments across Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Ahmedabad in the last couple of years. We’ve also tried to make sense of the differences in spending, the quirks and commonalities, and what drives them.  

For our analysis, we’ve used micro data from the Household Consumption Expenditure Survey conducted by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation for FY23 and FY24, covering around 15K households sampled from these cities.

Bi-modal, bridge and balanced: 3 kinds of Tier I cities based on household spending