Data

Are young Indians drinking less? What the numbers actually say

Differ* 3 min read

Not really. Not yet, anyway.

Almost everywhere else, young people are drinking less. India is the exception: 15 to 20 million people here reach drinking age every year, and the market is still growing. But something is shifting underneath. Most of the better-off drinkers surveyed in big cities have taken a break at some point, and fewer nights come with a drink by default.

So the honest headline isn't "India's quitting." It's that more nights are a choice now.

Are young people drinking less around the world?

In a lot of places, yes.

In the US, Gallup found in August 2025 that 54% of adults say they drink at all, the lowest in nearly ninety years of asking. Among 18 to 34 year olds it's 50%. Two in three of that younger group now say even moderate drinking is bad for you.

Globally, Euromonitor found 53% of consumers say they're actively cutting back, up from 44% five years earlier, according to ThePrint's reporting of the study.

So why isn't that the story in India?

Because India is the one big market going the other way.

IWSR, which tracks drinks markets, says India adds 15 to 20 million people of legal drinking age every year. Speaking to Business Standard, it called India the only market with all three of its drinking indicators in positive territory. Across the fifteen markets it studies, the share of legal-age Gen Z who drank in the last six months actually went up, from 66% in 2023 to 73% in 2025.

And the same Euromonitor study that found the world cutting back had India with the largest projected rise in alcohol consumption to 2029.

If someone tells you young India has stopped drinking, they're selling something. Possibly a drink.

Then what's actually changing?

The number of nights, not the number of people.

IWSR found that 72% of more affluent drinkers in ten major Indian cities had stopped drinking for a period. Not quit. Stopped for a while, then carried on, or didn't. And light drinkers are now the biggest group across the markets it studies.

That's the shift. The same person, drinking some nights and not others, without making it a whole announcement.

What does that look like on an actual night out?

Coffee raves, for a start. Cafes in Khar and Bandra have hosted them, and they've turned up in Delhi, Gurugram, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. You dance at a cafe at a normal hour, nobody's holding a glass, and it costs about half of a night at a bar, by one attendee's maths, in The Hollywood Reporter India.

Bars have noticed too. At one Bengaluru bar, drinks without alcohol are about a fifth of sales, as ThePrint reported.

Is drinking less "better"?

That's not our call to make.

Some nights the right answer is a drink. Some nights it isn't. The only thing that's actually new is that the second kind of night has more places to go and more things to order. It used to be a soft drink or a lecture.

We're making something for the second kind. Get your founder code and you'll hear when Batch 001 is ready. It's not a pledge. It's an email.

Sources

Differ*