India’s consumer internet market saw ‘swoosh-shaped’ recovery in 2020; to hit $250B GMV in 2025

India’s teeming consumer internet market, which has the majority of the country’s unicorns such as Paytm, Byju’s, BigBasket, Nykaa, Lenskart, etc., was able to recover beyond the January level in Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) terms by the end of 2020. What’s called a ‘swoosh-shaped’ recovery, which looks like the Nike logo or a tick mark, the consumer internet segment dropped from pre-Covid $75 billion GMV in January to $10 billion in April before it bounced back to around $45 billion in June, approximately $65 billion in August, and finally to around $80 billion in December, according to the data from RedSeer. Apart from foodtech, travel, and mobility, most of the sectors had gained in 2020. The Swoosh-shaped recovery is somewhere between the V and U-shaped recoveries wherein after a steep fall, the growth recovers with a partial bounce and later moves to a more gradual recovery.