Urban women spend more time online than men across entertainment, ecommerce: Report
The India Digital Behaviour Report 2025-26, jointly published by VTION and the Internet And Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) shows that women are shaping urban India's digital attention economy.
Women in urban India are spending more time than men across several high-engagement digital categories, including entertainment, messaging, ecommerce, and quick commerce, according to the India Digital Behaviour Report 2025-26 by VTION and the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI).
Based on data from more than 100,000 consented smartphones representing over 407 million urban Indians, the report found that women consistently outpace men in time spent across most major digital categories, with the widest engagement gap seen on commerce platforms.
According to the report, urban women spend an average of 82.4 minutes a day on entertainment platforms, with usage peaking among those aged 25–34 at 86.3 minutes daily.
In ecommerce and quick commerce, women in the same age group living in megacities spent an average of 35.2 minutes per day, compared to 24.8 minutes for their male counterparts, marking a 42% higher engagement level.
Another finding revealed that AI apps are witnessing rapid adoption as a new daily digital habit in urban India, with the category recording 100%+ growth from April 2025 to March 2026. Urban users spent an average
of 11.3 minutes per active day on AI applications, with adoption currently concentrated among 18-34-year-olds and higher-income urban households. The findings suggest that conversational AI is increasingly influencing how users discover brands and products online, with consumers turning to AI tools before opening traditional search or e-commerce platforms.
The report focused on four geographic zones that included:
North: Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir
South: Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Puducherry
East: West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand, Assam and the Northeast states
West: Maharashtra, Gujarat, Goa
One of the report’s key findings is that young urban Indians aged 18–24 are the biggest drivers of social media usage, spending an average of 120 minutes a day—significantly higher than the overall category average of 97.9 minutes. Meanwhile, urban consumers aged 35 and above dominate the entertainment category, with daily engagement of 77–78 minutes.
The report also found that payment app usage remains remarkably uniform across income groups, with users from higher-, middle-, and lower-income urban households showing nearly identical session depth trends. This suggests that UPI is now an embedded part of everyday digital behaviour.
The India Digital Behaviour Report 2025-26 is based entirely on passive, privacy-compliant behavioural measurement, drawing directly from active app usage data collected through VTION’s consented smartphone panel.