Party planning, coaching and education, lessons and tuitions, fitness and wellness were the top four local services that people turned to online for, according to a survey by Sulekha.com.
In comparison to 2015, the party planning category grew 43% this year. Birthday parties, wedding planning and DJ services top the list of popular party services. Wedding planning saw the maximum growth of 130% in 2016. Delhi and Bangalore spent one and a half times more than Hyderabad and Chennai for birthday parties.
The category of coaching and education grew 42% over 2015. Searches for Spoken English classes grew 46% in Tier 2 cities led by Chandigarh, Nagpur, Surat, Madurai, Coimbatore, Jaipur and Vijayawada. Users are mostly between the ages of 17 to 25 and are seeking jobs and higher education opportunities by enrolling for Spoken English classes.
Engineering, MBA and Medicine continue to be the top 3 choices, similar to 2015. Journalism has become a new choice amongst the top 5 options for overseas education.
Dance classes made up for nearly 30 percentage of all enquiries in the lessons & tuitions category. Western dance & Salsa classes (searches) are growing 3.4 times faster than Bharatanatyam, Kathak and Bhangra classes. Users are increasingly selecting guitar, flute, drums related classes in most of the top eight cities. Keyboard and piano witnessed a steady growth of 30% in Bangalore, Mumbai & Pune.
Home Yoga instructors (searches) have increased five times more than yoga centers – showing an increasing inclination among users to get yoga & meditation at home. At-home yoga is costlier than yoga centers. However, users in Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai are increasingly choosing this option.
Meditation centres are getting popular in Chennai, Delhi and Kolkata – particularly for weekend related searches. Weight loss category has seen a sharp increase of 140% in Delhi/NCR, Mumbai and Chennai.
The report indicates that owing to demonetization, there has been a decline in some categories in the final quarter of 2016, when compared to 2015.
Satya Prabhakar, founder and CEO, Sulekha said, “The report highlights the growing trend and acceptance among people to look for professional local services online. This report also indicates how service providers across India are realising the power of the internet to scale their businesses".