Most Indians now pay for online content; gaming leads in spending: Lumikai

Majority of Indians now pay for accessing content online with gaming dominating the pie in wallet share for payment size of over Rs 1,000, a survey has found, said a top official of the gaming and interactive content focused venture capital firm Lumikai.

Lumikai Founder and Managing Partner Salone Sehgal told PTI that the survey covered around 3,000 mobile phone users across the country between September 2024 and September 2025.

The report found that 80 per cent of those consumer bases use UPI for payments, and at least 40 per cent maintain three or four active subscriptions.

She said the trend reveals that India's digitally native audience is young, data-hungry, and highly willing to pay.

"We did a deep dive into where people are spending that time and what is the attention share and how does it slice. of course, social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, YouTube are a very dominant part of that but I think what was more interesting was that gaming attention share stands at about 49 per cent," Sehgal said.

She said over 46 per cent of India's interactive media consumers are women and over two-thirds are from non-metro regions, and around 80 per cent consume more than 1 GB of mobile data.

According to Lumikai's recently released annual report "Swipe Before Type", the gaming landscape is being redefined by women (45 per cent of gamers), non-metro users (60 per cent), and expanding device diversity.

Asked about the possibility of data overlap between children using their mother's phone for accessing the internet and the findings of the Lumikai survey, Sehgal said all consumers covered in the survey were above 18 years.

According to the report, games command a 70 per cent share of wallet for ticket sizes above Rs 1,000, signalling that propensity to pay amongst gamers is significantly higher than that across other forms of entertainment.

The report found that 50 per cent of consumers surveyed paid for midcore games, 20 per cent for casual games, 15 per cent for real money games -- that are banned now, and 5 per cent for hyper-casual games.

The report found that users spend 10 hours weekly on social platforms, driven by desires to interact with friends, influencers, and like-minded communities, with 33 per cent using astrology apps regularly.