India’s rich watch TV, the poor go online

India’s richer states, and their elders, are watching more television, while poorer ones and their youth are more absorbed in the internet.

It is the kind of finding that makes one pause, for one might assume the rise of the internet would correlate directly with prosperity.

This nugget came from Godrej Consumer Products Limited (GCPL) global media lead Harsh Deep Chhabra’s session at the afaqs! Media Quest Summit, which explored the future of media investments. To glean more such insights, please watch the entire session. 

“What was once considered a medium for the rich is now a medium for the poor,” claimed Chhabra.

Drawing on data from the 2024 FICCI EY Media & Entertainment report, he explained how prosperous states such as Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala over-indexed on television consumption, especially among the elderly.

In poorer states such as Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the ratios between television, YouTube and Meta are not far from one another, among the youth. One of his slides declared bluntly: “Digital first audiences are younger/poorer.”

To make sense of this reversal, one must consider what has changed. For one, Indians spend more time on the internet than on any other medium. “There are 752 million people on the internet in a month compared to 705 million on linear TV,” said Chhabra. He attributed this to the rise of smartphones and the growing presence of connected TVs.

Another factor is the decline of pay TV. Using EY data, he noted that the number of pay TV households had fallen from 171m in 2021 to 160m in 2024. “There may be many households in this country which will never see a TV set at all.”

Yet, some things have remained constant. Inequality, for instance, has not shifted much. India’s Gini coefficient (a measure of inequality) has stayed between 31 and 35 for four decades, compared with a global average of about 47. “The social fibre of the country isn’t changing as significantly as we are thinking,” he argued.

Consumption patterns, too, have been sticky. GCPL’s Godrej No 1 soap has held steady, with about 30% of its penetration in the NCCS A category since 2021. And despite the surge of digital devices, India largely remains a one-television country. Families still see the big screen as sacred, a time to gather.

Also read: Godrej Consumer bets big on in-housing, adds AI lab & content factory

GCPL knows this terrain well. It is India’s third-biggest television advertiser. Its purpose, said Chhabra, is to bring the goodness of health and beauty to consumers in emerging markets. To that end the FMCG firm relies on reach-based planning, which seeks to maximise the number of unique people exposed to a campaign, rather than the frequency with which one person sees it.

A note of thanks to the presenting sponsor MiQ, media partner Aaj Tak, and co-partners Huella Services, Socioclout, TV9 Network, News Nine, Business Standard and CTVScale.

Photo by Soumith Soman