In a bustling student hostel in Bengaluru, Swaksha Gupta scrolls through her favourite shopping app.
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She skips past the household names filled with artificial ingredients that her parents grew up with, instead finding inspiration from older generations by filling her cart with turmeric-infused face washes and Ayurvedic hair oils in biodegradable tubes.
“Even a product like ubtan comes in a tube these days,” Gupta said, referring to the traditional paste of herbs and lentils once ground in family kitchens, now reimagined by start-ups like Mamaearth. “They tend to last longer, are better for my skin and good for sustainability.”
Gupta’s personal choice reflects a powerful collective one. From cosmetics to packaged food, fashion to household items, India’s Generation Z – broadly defined as those born between the mid-1990s and early 2010s – is fuelling an unprecedented consumer transformation.
They browse, buy and broadcast online, demanding products that are clean, transparent and culturally rooted while rejecting the uniformity of multinational giants.
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The numbers suggest something of a consumer revolution. More than two-thirds of urban Indians now check ingredient lists before buying food, while 80 per cent actively avoid additives, according to a report released last month by Deloitte and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.