Women’s cricket searches rose by 103% in 2024: Kantar India study

While cricket continues to captivate Indians with 220 million average monthly online searches, there was a notable rise in interest in women’s cricket among Indians in 2024, leading to a 103% increase in searches by them, according to the latest ‘India in Search’ report released by Kantar.

Kantar examined the searches carried out by Indians across more than 400 validated search topics during a one-year period between November 2023 and October 2024. Categorising them based on historical data, volume, and growth, the research firm analysed the trends mapping them against its Trends Framework Matrix.

The report captures trends 15 key search categories including sports, entertainment and music, mobiles, health and wellness, news, experiences, travel and mobility, home décor, kidsverse, influencer and celebrities, fashion, environment, beauty, gardening and agriculture, and pet care.

Source: Kantar

While cricket continues to be the dominant sport, even other games, including kabaddi, hockey, and eSports were found to be gaining traction, the study found. Kabaddi searches were seen increasing by 75% and hockey searches by 40%, indicating the rising sports culture in India. Community sports like cricket, badminton, and even the recent entrant, pickleball, were seen captivating Indians.

On the music and entertainment front, the study found a growing interest in thrillers, crime, and horror genres, while traditional action movies witnessing a decline. Live music and concerts were found to be becoming popular, with a 43% increase in searches for events like Coldplay, Taylor Swift, Vijay Antony, and Diljit Dosanjh concerts. However, as a worrisome fact, free pirated content continued to entice online Indian users in 2024. Nearly 7.96 million average monthly searches were found to be happening for pirated sites during the study period, indicating a 12% growth.

Within mobiles, Indians exhibited a 418% surge in search interest of the ‘Pro’ versions of mobile phones across brands. While Chinese mobile brands accounted for 52% of all smartphone brand searches in 2024 in India, Samsung, Vivo, and iPhone drove the highest search volumes. The fastest-growing phone models included Redmi 13C 5G with one million searches (+44K%), Nothing Phone 2A with 800,000 searches (+37%), and Motorola Edge 50 Fusion with 6.73 lakh searches (+30%).

The study reveals that Indians are becoming more health-conscious. Evolving beyond physical ailments to include mental wellbeing and skin health, the health searches last year comprised areas such as sensitive skin solutions (50 lakh searches) and pregnancy care (two million searches). The searches reveal a rising interest in nutrition, supplements, and natural food sources. While obesity and weight management remained major concerns, consumers turned to fitness apps (289K, +12%) more than personal trainers (307K, +2%) to learn about fitness.

Source: Kantar

When it comes to searching for news, major headlines and the latest updates drove 41% of all searches in 2024. Online users actively followed up on TV news stories, from Ratan Tata’s passing to Sunita Williams' stranding in space. Interest in the Sensex and NIFTY fuelled business news consumption, while interest in political news spiked due to the general elections in 2024. As online users became selective, they explored independent and digital-first sources beyond the mainstream media to obtain a nuanced and real-time news experience.

Indian consumers explored various dining experiences and shopping malls. Dine-ins saw a doubling of searches, controlling the largest share of searches in the ‘experiences category’ last year. Nuanced dine-in experiences, such as fine dining, were seen as driven by metros like Bengaluru (416,000 searches), indicating a 104% growth.

In the ‘travel and mobility’ space, offbeat destinations seemed to have gained popularity, reflected through a 49% growth in searches. In India, Lakshadweep led the pack with a gigantic increase in interest (268% growth) catalysed by Narendra Modi’s visit to Lakshadweep following the controversy involving Maldives. International travel was also on the rise, with searches for offbeat destinations like Azerbaijan (268%) and Kazakhstan (226%) rising substantially. Community-based mobility options like carpooling and bike rentals were seen becoming popular, as their searches indicated.

The ‘home decor’ category captured the interest of Indian online users, with consumers looking for prettier homes and home makeovers with focus being one room at a time. A few brands too saw a rise in searches in this category, with the dominant one being Furlenco which saw the search volumes rise by 54% last year. Even the professional cleaning services also saw a rise in searches by 40% by the Indian consumers.

Source: Kantar

With the influencer class gaining dominance during the past few years, they along with celebrities too, seem to have driven substantial search volumes during the study period. While viral influencers and controversial stars held the attention of India’s netizens, there was a marked 360% increase in the searches for fashion influencers in 2024.

With parents increasingly willing to splurge to ensure their kids receive the best. Born digital natives, the Gen Alpha (born after 2012) and Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012), kids too made their presence felt online as the searches by kids revealed during the study. The study period saw nearly 10.7 million searches for YouTube kids. With parents prioritising luxury and well-being, the market for high-quality children’s products continues to grow.

Among other search categories, fashion, environment, beauty, gardening and agriculture, and pet care emerged as dominant topics for Indian netizens during 2024, as the study showed.