When it comes to India’s biggest consumer markets, Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and the other megacities usually dominate the conversation. But look at spending at the household level, and a very different picture emerges.
A new report on India’s urban economy finds that the cities where households spend the most are not necessarily the country’s biggest metros. In fact, none of the top five cities by average household spending is among India’s six megacities.
The report, The Many Urban Indias, by PRICE and Tata Sons Research, finds that households in Chandigarh have the highest average consumption in India. Thiruvananthapuram comes next, while households in Amritsar, Ahmedabad and Jabalpur also spend more per household than those in Mumbai.
The finding highlights a larger shift in India’s consumption story: while the Big Six continue to dominate because of their huge populations, spending power is spreading to smaller and mid-sized cities.
Chandigarh stands out as the biggest per-household spender in the report.
The city, classified as a Frontier city because of its population size, also has one of the highest average household incomes in the country. At around Rs 28.3 lakh a year, Chandigarh’s average household income is comparable to that of Bengaluru, which is also at the top of the income rankings.
Thiruvananthapuram is the second-highest city in terms of average household consumption. The report specifically says the two cities have the highest average household consumption in India and also points to their relatively strong financial position, with high savings and low levels of debt.
The other three cities that stand out are Amritsar, Ahmedabad and Jabalpur. The report says average household spending in all three is higher than in Mumbai.
The report does not provide the exact household consumption figures for all five cities in the extracted city-level data, so it is safer to treat Chandigarh and Thiruvananthapuram as the top two and the other three as cities that exceed Mumbai, rather than assign an exact rank to each.
This does not mean Mumbai has lost its position as a major consumption centre.
Mumbai remains one of India’s largest consumer markets because of its population and high-income households. The average Mumbai household earns about Rs 24.2 lakh a year and spends around Rs 14 lakh annually.
But Mumbai’s sheer size can obscure another trend: smaller cities can have higher spending per household even if their overall consumer markets are much smaller.
The Big Six — Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad — account for about 46% of consumption across the 100 cities tracked in the report. Their combined spending power comes largely from their much larger household base.
Delhi NCR, for instance, has 7.5 million households compared with 4.6-4.7 million in Mumbai. Its average household consumption is nearly Rs 15 lakh a year, helping make Delhi NCR a $126-billion consumption market — almost the size of Mumbai and Bengaluru combined.
So there are two different ways to look at India’s consumption map: total spending, where the megacities dominate, and spending per household, where smaller cities are increasingly punching above their weight.
The report also identifies a group of fast-growing cities that are becoming important consumption centres in their own right.
Surat, Ahmedabad and Pune each represent markets of roughly $30 billion, in overall consumption. Thiruvananthapuram, Coimbatore, Lucknow, Jaipur, Vadodara and Kollam are also highlighted as cities that combine relatively high household spending with a sizeable population base.
Surat is particularly notable. Outside the Big Six, it has the largest consumption market in India, with average household consumption higher than Bengaluru. The report links its rise to textile-led entrepreneurship, the diamond trade and upward mobility among migrant households.
Overall, the top 15 cities, each with a consumption market of at least $10 billion, account for roughly two-thirds of consumption among the 100 cities studied.
The scale of this urban consumption story is significant.
The top 100 cities account for just 19% of India’s population but generate 35% of income and 31% of consumption. Together, they spend around $844 billion a year. If these 100 cities were treated as a country, they would form the world’s 14th-largest consumption market, ahead of Indonesia and behind South Korea and Turkey.
Average household consumption across the 100 cities is estimated at Rs 12.1 lakh a year.
The Big Six average Rs 13.5 lakh, compared with Rs 12.2 lakh in Boomtowns, Rs 11.2 lakh in Breakout cities and Rs 9.1 lakh in Frontier cities.
This makes the city-level exceptions even more interesting: despite lower average figures for their broader city categories, individual smaller cities such as Chandigarh and Thiruvananthapuram can record spending levels well above the average for much larger urban centres.
One explanation is the changing income structure of urban India.
The report estimates that the share of middle-income households — those with annual household incomes between Rs 6 lakh and Rs 36 lakh at 2025-26 prices — has almost doubled over the past decade to 53%, from 29%. By 2030-31, this group is expected to account for 60% of households in the top 100 cities.
High-income households, earning more than Rs 36 lakh a year, have also increased sharply. Their share has risen fourfold to 12% from 3% over the past decade and is projected to approach one-fifth of households by 2030-31.
The shift is not restricted to Mumbai, Delhi or Bengaluru.
The report says Bengaluru and Chandigarh have the highest average household incomes at around Rs 28 lakh. Vadodara’s average household income of Rs 26 lakh is similar to Delhi’s and higher than Mumbai’s, while Pune, Thiruvananthapuram and Surat also have higher average household incomes than Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata.