What did we find?
The quick answer. Small cities now account for most online orders in the festive season, but the exact share depends on who counted and what. The four reports we read count shoppers or orders, a whole year or two festive months, and Tier II and beyond or Tier 2 and 3 only. That is why they give more than 80%, 65%, 74.7% and 65%. (PromotEdge reading of four public news pages, 7 November 2026.)
Why do the numbers differ?
- Shoppers or orders. A shopper is a person. An order is a purchase. Small-city shoppers may order less often or more often than big-city shoppers, so the two shares need not match.
- A year or a season. Anarock looks ahead to 2030, and ClickPost and Fynd look at the festive months only.
- Tier II and beyond, or Tier 2 and 3. Meesho counts "Tier II and beyond". Fynd counts Tier 2 and 3 together. The groups may not be the same.
- Whose customers. Meesho counts its own shoppers. ClickPost counts shipments it handles. Fynd counts 60 brands on large platforms. None of them counts everyone.
- Which city list. There is no single tier list. Wikipedia says the government ranks cities X, Y and Z by population for house rent allowance, and that these are more commonly known as Tier-1, Tier-2 and Tier-3. There are eight X cities: Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai and Pune. The stories we read do not say which list they used.
Two small things we noticed
The story and its headline. The YourStory page is headed "Nearly 80% of online orders" but its first line says more than 80% of online shoppers. That is a different count, and a different number.
The sums. The ClickPost page says Tier-3 cities were 50.7 per cent of orders and Tier-2 cities 24.8 per cent, and puts them together at 74.7 per cent. Those two numbers add up to 75.5. We cannot tell which is the typing slip. Anarock's 65% for smaller cities and 36% for Tier 1 also add up to 101%. We do not say any report is wrong. We say you should check the arithmetic and the definition before you quote a number.
What it means for a business
What the reports agree on. All four point the same way: a large and growing share of online buying now comes from outside the biggest cities. Fynd also says digital payments were 53% of transactions while cash on delivery held ground in smaller towns, and Meesho says nearly 40% of its orders from the north-east were driven by influencer content. Those are their findings about their own shoppers, not a rule for yours.
What it does not tell you. None of this says how many of your buyers live where. The only number that can plan your stock, your delivery promise and your cash on delivery share is your own. For the cost side, see our D2C guide, and for a list of brands built online, our D2C brands in India.
A made-up example. Say a snack brand shipped 10,000 orders last year. It sorts the delivery pin codes into the eight X cities and everything else, using the Wikipedia list, and finds 2,300 orders in the X cities and 7,700 elsewhere. That is 77% elsewhere, but only 55% of the rupees, because big-city orders are larger. It writes both numbers down, and plans delivery promises and a cash-on-delivery limit for the second group. The example is made up.
Five steps for Monday
- Export the last 12 months of orders with the delivery pin code and the order value.
- Choose one city list and write its name on the sheet. Keep it fixed so next year's numbers compare.
- Count orders and rupees for each group, not orders alone.
- Count the festive months on their own and compare them with the rest of the year.
- Ask what each group needs: delivery time, payment method, language of your ads and messages. See our WhatsApp marketing for D2C brands for ideas on messages.
A word of care. We read news pages about the reports, not the reports themselves, so every number here is as the news page printed it. These are findings to think with, not promises. Your own order sheet decides.
If you want help turning your order sheet into a plan, see our ecommerce marketing services in India, our market research services or ask for a free growth plan.
