VILNIUS, Lithuania, New Delhi, Oct 23: With the festive season around the corner, new Hostinger research shows how sharply Diwali outcomes in 2025 differed for Indian online stores depending on whether preparation activity was detected ahead of the festival. Among stores with no detected preparation activity, orders fell 13.1% during last year’s Diwali, and 53% of them saw orders drop by more than 20%. Stores where activity was first detected 8–21 days ahead saw orders rise 19.2%, the strongest growth of any group.
Hostinger analyzed the performance of 6,910 Indian online stores during Diwali 2025 as part of a broader research project covering around 50,000 online stores globally during Black Friday 2025. The analysis compared orders from October 2025, when Diwali took place, with their July–September 2025 baseline and grouped them by the earliest detected preparation activity, including product updates, discounts or coupons, and payment-method changes. Hosting, server, and site-speed upgrades were excluded.
Only 22% of the Indian stores analyzed showed any such activity before Diwali. The other 78% showed none.
“Diwali is one of the biggest moments of the year for Indian online sellers, but it takes more than festive discounts to make the most of it. Customers are actively looking for offers, but attracting their attention is only part of the challenge. Sellers also need to make it easy for people to find the right products, understand the offers, and complete their purchases. The better prepared a store is for that journey, the better positioned it is to turn festive shopping interest into actual sales,” said Justinas Vaičiulis, Product Marketing Lead at Hostinger.
The timing pattern was not linear. Stores where activity was first detected 8–21 days ahead recorded the strongest growth, with more than half of them (55%) growing orders by over 20%. By contrast, the earliest group, with activity first detected 22–35 days out, was broadly flat at +0.5%.
Stores where preparation activity was first detected in the final week recorded 6.7% order growth, though 24% saw declines of more than 20%. The highest share of such steep declines was among stores with no detected preparation activity.
The data suggest that visible commercial preparation, such as refreshed product listings, festive offers and updated payment options, is associated with stronger festive results.
