India Retail Spending Rises 9.6% in August, RAI-Innoviti SANKET Reports

Same-store retail spending accelerates from 7.1% in July, with Tier 3 towns and Fashion & Lifestyle recording strong growth

Same-store retail spending across India increased 9.6% year-on-year in August, compared with 7.1% in July, according to the second edition of SANKET (Spends & Key Emerging Trends), a quarterly like-for-like retail tracker published jointly by the Retailers Association of India (RAI) and Innoviti.

The report is based on more than 70 million transactions across over 100,000 checkout points, covering more than 2,800 towns and 10,000-plus PIN codes. August recorded the strongest monthly reading since April, with growth reported across multiple categories and regions.

Grocery, Fashion and Jewellery Record Growth

Grocery & General Retail recorded the highest category growth at 9.9%, rising from 7.5% in July. Fashion & Lifestyle increased from 4.5% to 8.5%, marking the largest category-level monthly improvement during the quarter.

Jewellery & Accessories grew to 8.4%, its strongest reading since the April Akshaya Tritiya spike.

Consumer Electronics remained unchanged at 5.0%, with the report noting that the category continues to face pressure from the impact of a weak rupee on import costs, even as festive demand begins to build.

Regionally, the West recorded 10.7% growth and the South 9.7%, retaining their leading positions. The North registered the sharpest single-month rebound among the zones, increasing by 3.0 percentage points from July.

Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO, Retailers Association of India, said: “These numbers tell us business is promising right now, and the recovery is genuinely encouraging — it's broad enough to trust, not a one-category story,” said Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO, Retailers Association of India. “August is really a precursor to the festive season, and if this pace holds, retailers have good reason to plan with confidence heading into it. At the same time, we're keeping an eye on the global turmoil. India's consumption story stands on its own, but no market runs in isolation, and it pays to stay cautious even while the data looks good.”

Tier 3 Towns Outpace Tier 1 Cities

The report identified continued strength outside major metropolitan markets. Tier 3 towns recorded 11.9% growth in August, compared with 7.6% in Tier 1 cities, creating a 4.3-percentage-point gap.

According to SANKET, the like-for-like methodology measures spending at the same stores year-on-year, meaning the growth in smaller towns reflects increased spending at existing stores rather than an increase resulting from retailers opening additional outlets.

In Tier 2 cities, Jewellery and Fashion recorded growth of 11.6% and 13.0%, respectively, as value-format retail and mid-city discretionary spending increased.

UPI-Linked Spending Records Stronger Growth

Payments data showed a widening gap between UPI-linked and card-based spending. UPI-linked same-store spending increased 22.6% year-on-year in August, while card spending grew 0.4%.

Rajeev Agrawal, Founder and CEO, Innoviti Technologies, said: "The payments data underneath these numbers tells its own story. UPI's pulling further ahead of cards in almost every category we track, and that shift is happening at the point of sale, transaction by transaction, not in a survey. For us, that's the value of SANKET — it turns raw payment flows into a read on where real demand is moving, month by month, well before the broader retail data catches up," said Rajeev Agrawal, Founder and CEO, Innoviti Technologies.

The report noted that card growth was concentrated almost entirely in Jewellery, where larger gold ticket sizes continue to favour card payments. Excluding Jewellery, card spending would have contracted during the month.