Conversational commerce momentum

Indian shopping apps are starting to act less like aisles and more like salespeople. Flipkart said in October 2025 that it had already launched a generative artificial intelligence chat assistant in its app and was rebuilding parts of the shopping journey around “chat-led commerce.” (stories.flipkart.com) That shift is showing up before the market is fully mature. Bain says India’s e-retail market was about $65 billion to $66 billion in gross merchandise value in 2025, but could reach $170 billion to $180 billion by 2030 with growth above 20% a year. (bain.com) India already has the raw traffic for this experiment. DataReportal says the country had 1.03 billion internet users at the end of 2025 and 500 million social media user identities in October 2025. (datareportal.com) But only a fraction of those people actually shop online today. Bain says just 30% of users on social and messaging platforms, about 200 million people, shop online, even though more than 650 million Indians are active on those platforms. (bain.com) One reason is that app shopping breaks down outside the most digitally fluent users. Bain found that 65% of “savvy digital users” find app downloads frustrating, and 40% abandon a purchase if they are pushed to install an app. (bain.com) Chat changes that by turning search boxes into back-and-forth help. Bain argues that “conversational journeys” on high-use services like messaging and social apps can work like assisted shopping for the next 450 million less-savvy digital users who struggle with storage limits, app navigation, or unassisted browsing. (bain.com) Flipkart’s own description of the strategy is concrete. Its chief data scientist said the company is using intent understanding, summarization, question answering, image synthesis, and audio synthesis so an assistant can recommend products and help move shoppers from browsing to purchase. (stories.flipkart.com) This is happening as India becomes one of the deepest consumer markets for ChatGPT itself. OpenAI says ChatGPT had 700 million weekly active users globally in 2025, and its research found especially rapid growth in low- and middle-income countries. (openai.com) OpenAI’s public Signals data does not list country totals in the snippet available here, but multiple reports published on February 20, 2026 said the company’s new data showed ChatGPT had crossed 100 million weekly active users in India, making India its largest market outside the United States. That likely helps explain why Indian retailers think shoppers are ready to type natural-language requests instead of filters and keywords. (openai.com, livemint.com, news.abplive.com) The bet is simple: if hundreds of millions of Indians are already comfortable asking a chatbot “find me running shoes under ₹2,000” or “show me a sofa for a small living room,” then the next wave of e-retail growth may come from conversation first and catalog second. Bain’s 2030 forecast suggests the prize is large enough that every major platform will want to test that idea fast. (bain.com, bain.com)