Are Indian Customers Addicted to Discounts?
India’s digital economy has been built on a simple formula — discounts, cashback, and flash sales. From e-commerce giants to food delivery platforms, the Indian consumer has been trained to expect ‘something off.’ Every order, every ride, every pizza — there’s always a promo code waiting to be applied. But what began as a growth strategy has now become a dependency.
At Yori, we’ve been studying this closely. Because if we want to build something sustainable, we can’t keep fuelling an economy of discounts that burns cash faster than it creates loyalty.
The Discount Habit
The ‘discount-first’ mindset didn’t appear overnight. It started with e-commerce and quickly infected every other category — food delivery, ride-hailing, grocery, and even fintech. India’s billion-plus population made it the perfect laboratory for customer acquisition at scale. For years, platforms fought each other by offering unsustainable margins and deep incentives, all in the name of ‘market share.’
Customers, meanwhile, adapted. Many now switch between apps purely based on who’s giving the best deal that day. Loyalty has been replaced by convenience and price sensitivity. When discounts vanish, so do the users.
Zomato, Swiggy, and Blinkit have all felt the heat. Despite growth in gross order volume, their profitability remains fragile. Why? Because the moment the discounts stop, order volumes drop.
A System Built on Borrowed Trust
The discount-driven model has another side effect — it distorts real value. Merchants inflate prices to appear discount-friendly, platforms burn investor money to stay relevant, and users lose sight of what things actually cost.
In the process, an entire generation of Indian consumers has been conditioned to view value through the lens of ‘percentage off.’ That’s not just a business risk; it’s a cultural one.
When every company is offering ‘90% off,’ who’s building real trust?
Our Take at Yori
At Yori, we’ve decided to go the opposite way.
We don’t want to lure users with discounts; we want to retain them with fairness.
Our focus is on transparency — fair pricing for customers, fair commissions for partners, and fair earnings for riders. Instead of spending crores on discount-driven marketing, we’re investing in the product, reliability, and local merchant relationships.
We believe that habitual discounts weaken ecosystems, while trust and value strengthen them.
When users see that they consistently get quality service without gimmicks, they stay. Not because of offers, but because of experience.
The Future: Value Over Vanity
The next wave of Indian startups will be defined not by who can burn more capital but by who can build genuine value.
The Indian customer is not inherently addicted to discounts — they’ve just been conditioned to expect them. Give them reliability, fairness, and respect for their time and money, and they’ll respond.
The age of ‘growth at any cost’ is fading.
What’s coming next is ‘trust at every cost.’
At Yori, that’s the game we’re playing — long-term, fearless, and built to last.