The Digital-First Consumer: New Expectations for Consumer Rewards

Shuaib Azam

min. read

June 18, 2025

Consumer rewards

India is on track to surpass 1 billion smartphone users by 2025, giving brands an always-on channel for real-time, app-based rewards.

Price sensitivity remains acute: 52 % of shoppers already pick private-label goods for better value and an academic review finds a 45 % brand-switching rate among loyalty members if a better deal appears.

Personalisation can blunt that churn, considering 68 % of Indian consumers say they prefer rewards tailored to them.

What consumers actually want

Instant cashback or discounts
Simple redemption flows
Offers that travel with them across mobile, web and UPI

Tech Foundations: AI, Mobile, UPI

UPI processed 18.68 billion payments in May 2025, a 33 % YoY jump, making rewards at checkout mainstream.
Beauty giant Nykaa credits AI-driven recommendations for a 35 % lift in repeat-purchase rates.

Hubble’s SDK plugs into this stack: one API call drops real-time rewards from a 500+ gift card brand catalogue into any app or system.

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Rewards That Move the Needle

Loyalty Programme Impact Table

Programme	Core Mechanic	Measurable Impact
Amazon Prime	Paid subscription	2.5× order frequency; avg. spend ≈ ₹25k vs ₹10k
Flipkart Plus	Gamified coins	1.8× more purchases per member
Zomato Gold	Dining subscription	+125 % orders, +33 % AOV
Tata NeuPass	Coalition wallet	+50 % repeat rate post-revamp
Source: “Loyalty Programs and Their Effectiveness in Driving Repeat Purchases” (ijrpr.com)

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During Amazon’s Great Indian Festival 2024, 85 % of orders came from non-metro buyers, underscoring the scale of Tier II/III adoption.

Business Impact & Market Outlook

A meta-analysis of leading Indian programmes shows:

Repeat-purchase uplift: 40 – 200 %
Spend uplift: 30 – 150 %

The loyalty-management market itself is worth US $670.6 million (2024) and is set to hit US $1.30 billion by 2030 (11.2 % CAGR).

Design Principles That Work

Keep benefits immediate; Indians join approximately 17 loyalty programs on average but actively use only 6–7.‍
Tie rewards to UPI for instant gratification.
Layer gamification (badges, scratch cards) where it adds genuine fun, not friction.

The Road Ahead

Value, speed and personal relevance will decide the next wave of winners. Brands that weave AI-powered personalisation, mobile-first UX and seamless UPI rewards into one omnichannel loop will lock in both transactional and emotional loyalty.

Why Hubble

Hubble’s cloud-native platform gives Indian businesses that loop out-of-the-box:

Plug-and-play SDK for real-time rewards, cashback or points across app, web and in-store QR.
AI optimisation that learns per user and per region.
Unified wallet & analytics to prove ROI—no more “budget left on the table.”

Ready to build the next standout consumer-rewards program? Drop us a quick note and we'll reach out to you.

tldr

Simple answer

India’s loyalty market is booming: smartphones and UPI make real-time, mobile rewards the norm, deal-hungry shoppers switch for value but stay for personalised perks, and top programs like Amazon Prime show 2×+ purchase boosts. The market will roughly double by 2030. Hubble’s plug-and-play SDK lets brands launch AI-driven, instant-payout rewards quickly and prove ROI, making it the easy way to win in this fast-growing space.