Table for one

HERE'S HOW MARKETERS ACROSS CATEGORIES ARE RESPONDING TO THE GROWING TREND OF SOLO CONSUMPTION

- CHRISTINA MONIZ

Year 2010. A lone diner is haunched over his plate of food in the dim glow of a restaurant’s lights.

What are the first thoughts that come to your mind? Sadness? Despondency?

Now consider the same restaurant. The same diner. Alone. But the year is 2026.

No one’s going to take you to task for thinking “freedom”, “opportunity”.

Across dining, travel and entertainment, solo consumption is no longer an oddity but a lifestyle signal. And businesses are waking up to that opportunity — be it Swiggy Scenes that rolled out a ‘solo’ bookings category, Zomato’s District app offering tables for one, or EaseMyTrip’s solo travel packages, brand optimism is hard to miss.

That optimism isn’t misplaced. In 2020, the number of single person households in the country reached 17.4 million. It is projected to account for 5.5% of Indian households by 2030. Categories like food delivery, dining, travel and entertainment are particularly seeing an uptick. According to estimates, solo domestic travel bookings are growing by 25-30% year-on-year, with such travellers spending about 28% more on travel in 2025. According to BookMyShow, over 1.8 million users attended events and movies solo last year, signalling growing demand for independent experiences.