RAI–Innoviti SANKET Report Tracks Retail Spending Trends Across Q1 and July Recovery

Like-for-like retail growth data highlights category, geography and payment trends across 50 million+ data points from 2800+ cities

The latest RAI–Innoviti SANKET report presents like-for-like business growth data across India's retail sector, providing insights into consumer spending across categories, cities and payment methods. Developed jointly by the Retailers Association of India (RAI) and Innoviti Technologies (Innoviti), the report recorded retail growth easing from 9.4% in April to 7.8% in May and 4.7% in June, before improving to 6.8% in July, marking the first month-on-month recovery since the beginning of the quarter.

The report is based on same-store sales, comparing current-month sales with the corresponding month in the previous year at the same retail locations. This methodology removes the impact of new store additions and provides a like-for-like assessment of demand across cities and product categories.

Category performance

Jewellery recorded the largest fluctuations during the period, growing 14.2% in April around Akshaya Tritiya, moderating to 4.6% in May, and then registering 6.6% in June and 6.4% in July.

Grocery sales remained close to 7% for two months before declining to 4.3% in June, coinciding with food inflation reaching a 16-month high. Growth recovered to 7.5% in July as monsoon rains eased supply pressures.

Consumer electronics and fashion maintained positive growth throughout the period, with both categories recording stronger performance in July.

Geographic trends

Retail growth moderated across all four regions during Q1 before improving in July.

The South remained the strongest-performing region throughout the four-month period. The West experienced the sharpest slowdown during Q1, followed by the strongest recovery in July.

Smaller cities continued to outperform metro markets during the quarter. The growth gap between Tier 3 and Tier 1 cities widened from 0.7 percentage points in April to 2.4 percentage points in June. In July, the difference narrowed to 1.9 percentage points as metro demand recovered more quickly than growth in smaller cities, which the report notes may indicate that weaker metro performance during Q1 was driven more by events than structural factors.

Payment trends

UPI transactions continued to grow at a faster pace than card payments across the reporting period.

UPI transaction growth stood at 22% in April, compared with 4.6% for card transactions. By June, growth moderated to 12% for UPI and 0.7% for cards, before increasing again in July to 14% and 3.2%, respectively.

Card transaction growth remained concentrated in the jewellery category, where higher-value purchases continue to favour card payments. In grocery retail, UPI accounted for the majority of payment volumes.

Commenting on the report, Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO, Retailers Association of India, said: "The RAI-Innoviti SANKET report shows like-for-like business growth data — real, per-store demand, not growth that's just new stores opening. That distinction matters, because it's the only way to tell if Indian retail is actually gaining strength or just gaining square footage. This quarter, the data showed a sector that dipped through the summer and then bounced back — but unevenly across categories, cities and payment methods. Jewellery moves on its own calendar. Payments are shifting structurally toward UPI. And whether smaller cities keep outpacing metros, or whether July's recovery closes that gap for good, is exactly the kind of question this data will keep answering month by month. That's why this partnership matters."

Rajeev Agrawal, CEO, Innoviti Technologies, said: "The RAI-Innoviti SANKET report shows what categories consumers are buying, where, and how they are paying for it. The inferences are from a compilation of 50million+ data points from 2800+ cities gathered from consenting businesses, publicly reported data, and primary data acquired through surveys. The report then uses AI to correlate trends with events happening in the economy to provide insights. It focusses on like-for-like growth across category, geography, and payment instruments. The key findings are a) discretionary buying (lifestyle and consumer electronics) has stayed robust throughout this period, b) economic growth is deepening into smaller cities, both in essentials and discretionary buying, and c) payments are shifting towards UPI for good, not just small ticket, but also higher values. We are excited to be partnering with RAI on unravelling these insights using advanced technologies and AI applied to real data, to build a roadmap that can help businesses plan better, market better, and grow better."