Demand for wedding services in Tier-II cities surge by 106% to power India’s growing gig economy – Just Dial Consumer Insights…

– Demand for wedding services across India grow by almost 50%

– Searches remain high for wedding bands and banquet halls across India

Mumbai, Nov 29: With India’s macro-economic landscape looking brighter on the back of financial activities re-bouncing to normalcy and a record vaccination of 1 billion doses, demand for wedding services across the country grew by 49.7% QoQ with most of this demand being generated by Tier-II cities that saw a growth of 106% benefitting the growing gig economy at large.

Just Dial analysed consumer demand for a wide range of wedding services such as Banquet Halls, Makeup Artists, Wedding Photographers, Wedding Bands, Wedding Jewellery, DJs, and Wedding Planners across 1000 Indian towns and cities. Across India, maximum demand growth was witnessed for wedding bands followed by banquet halls and DJs.

Commenting on the consumer demand growth during this wedding season, Mr. Prasun Kumar, CMO, Just Dial said “With India successfully administering 1 billion COVID vaccine doses, the surge in demand for wedding services on Just Dial is one of the leading indicators of consumer economy recalibrating and bouncing back with pace. It is heartening to see that demand rise for wedding services in Tier-II cities is almost 2X of India’s growth. Additionally, the festive season set the tone for this recovery indicating that the turnaround is here to stay. We look forward to strong demand build-up for wedding season ahead.”

Just Dial consumer insights suggests that Tier-II cities have been at the forefront of powering the demand drive during this wedding season while that in Tier-I cities have remained stable. In line with the national trends, wedding bands (152%) and banquet halls (145%) saw maximum QoQ growth in Tier-II cities followed by that for DJs (99%). Patna and Lucknow were the two Tier-II cities that saw maximum searches for all wedding related services.

Patna, Lucknow, and Gorakhpur were the top-3 Tier-II cities that saw maximum demand for banquet halls while Indore, Mangalore, and Chandigarh dominated the searches for caterers.

Patna, Chandigarh, and Lucknow saw maximum searches for DJs as Tier-II cities witnessed a 99% QoQ rise in demand. Most of the searches for florists originated from Chandigarh, Visakhapatnam, and Mysore as demand for flowers for wedding in Tier-II cities grew by 35%.

Searches for makeup artists in Tier-II towns and cities also shot up by 49% with maximum demand thrust coming from Lucknow, Chandigarh, and Jaipur. Demand for wedding bands surged by 152% with Lucknow, Patna, and Kanpur leading the race among Tier-II cities. As for the wedding photographers, Lucknow, Patna, and Indore led the demand growth as Tier-II cities saw a 67% growth in searches.

Wedding planners were in high demand in Patna, Jaipur, and Lucknow as Tier-II cities saw a growth of 39% for specialised services. Along with this, demand for wedding jewellery was maximum in southern cities of Coimbatore and Madurai followed by Jaipur.

Tier-I cities saw growth in searches for banquet halls (46.90%), makeup artists (37.10%), wedding jewellery (60.60%), wedding bands (181.10%), DJs (122.4%), and wedding planners (53.9%). Delhi and Mumbai were the two Tier-I cities that saw maximum demand across all services.

Maximum searches for banquet halls were generated from the cities of Mumbai, Delhi, and Chennai and that for make-up artists emanated from Delhi, Mumbai, and Kolkata. Demand for wedding jewellery remained high in Chennai, Delhi, and Bangalore while that for wedding bands shot up in Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai.

Searches for DJs remained high in Delhi followed by Mumbai and Chennai and that for wedding planners was dominated by Delhi, Mumbai, and Hyderabad.

With vaccination across the country pacing up, strong assurance of safety and security coupled with dipping COVID-19 cases seem to be collectively driving the demand surge of wedding related services and paving the way for a more consolidated and concerted growth momentum across all other consumer services in the days to come.