Why Own It?

Executive Summary Younger Indian consumers increasingly prioritise flexibility, affordability and convenience over ownership.

The shift extends into mobility, appliances, furniture, housing and other asset-heavy categories.

Access-based business models replace one-time transactions with recurring customer relationships.

They create new opportunities for revenue growth, retention and data-driven engagement.

Success depends on building capabilities in service delivery, reverse logistics, refurbishment and customer retention.

. Materialism is often seen as a defining feature of Indians born after the 1991 reforms. Transitioning from an era in which scarcity was the only thing in abundance, ownership of everything from cars to appliances is today a marker of prosperity and social standing. Increasingly, though, younger Indians are less concerned about outright ownership than about access, whether through rentals, leases or subscriptions.

With digital content like OTT video, music streaming, gaming and productivity software, the access model has already won. Pay-as-you-use mindsets are mainstream, and outright purchases have been largely displaced.

At its core, the new ‘Access Economy’ is about consumer behaviour that favours continuity and control over ownership, depreciation and lock-ins. This has significant business implications. Access-based models reshape revenue streams, reimagine customer relationships and demand new capabilities in terms of service operations and product design.

Looking ahead, success in access-dominated categories will hinge on the ability to retain customers by investing in refurbishment and reverse logistics, building or partnering for reliable service delivery and restructuring financial metrics around lifetime value. Conversely, businesses that continue to optimise for one-time transactions will find themselves competing on price in a market that increasingly rewards retention.

. Why Access is Rising . Financial drivers

The economics of ownership have become increasingly hostile for large swathes of consumers. The upfront cost of flagship smartphones, energy-efficient appliances and EVs are prohibitively high, even as aspirations continue to rise. Credit card use has risen sharply, with transaction values growing at a 26% CAGR over the last 15 years.

. This shift has been triggered by a growing comfort with, and access to debt: non-food bank credit grew at a CAGR of 12% in the same period. A generation raised on zero-cost EMIs finds the mental distance between an instalment plan and a monthly subscription vanishingly small. For middle-income households juggling rent, education expenses and lifestyle costs, predictable monthly access fees also reduce financial anxiety in ways that large one-time purchases never could.

. Behavioural drivers

Perhaps the biggest shift, though, is in terms of attitudes. For many Gen Zs and younger Millennials, ownership has lost its social signalling power. Renting a home, once associated with impermanence or unfulfilled aspirations, is being reframed as a more financially astute option, especially for younger people. A desire to trial, upgrade or switch without penalty has become the dominant mindset. App-based platforms have normalised the idea that a stranger’s furniture, a shared vehicle or a rented appliance can be reliably used and safely returned.

For many urban Indians, transportation is viewed increasingly as a utility rather than an asset – a shift that monthly car lease programs and micro-mobility passes such as Yulu have tapped into. Maruti Suzuki Subscribe , launched in 2020, offers zero-down-payment leasing through its partners. Mahindra & Mahindra began its own subscription push in 2019 before spinning Quiklyz out as a dedicated leasing arm in 2021. Toyota 's Subscribe program follows a similar no-down-payment model. Even luxury OEMs like BMW offer lease and subscription plans under ‘360° Finance Plans’, with monthly payments running up to 40% lower than a standard loan. This is particularly appealing for a demographic that prefers to switch or upgrade cars every 2-3 years.

The EV boom, which has come with high sticker prices, uncertain battery life/resale value and rapid technological change, has accelerated this shift and spawned its own innovative battery-as-a-service (BaaS) model. Because a lithium-ion pack can account for 35-50% of an EV's price, players such as SUN Mobility and Battery Smart let owners buy the vehicle without the battery and pay for energy on a swap-by-swap basis instead. Battery Smart alone runs over 1,500 swap stations and 280,000 circulating batteries. Subscription or lease-based models that bundle maintenance, insurance and the option to upgrade fulfil key consumer needs in one go. OEMs who once sold products are fast becoming mobility-as-a-service providers, competing on product quality as well as service reliability and customer experience.

. Structural drivers

India’s social fabric is being reshaped by urbanisation, nuclearisation and rising job mobility. A 26-year-old professional moving from Indore to Bengaluru for a new job does not necessarily want to buy a sofa, a refrigerator and a television set, only to face the burden of moving or selling them two years later. The realities of modern Indian life – smaller apartments, more frequent relocations and nuclear living – aligns well with access-based models. Water purifiers are a good example. A standard RO unit costs Rs 15,000–20,000 upfront, with AMCs adding up to another Rs 4,000–6,000. Many renters are unwilling to make such an outlay for a home they may vacate within a year. Players like Livpure and Rentomojo have filled this gap with subscription models that bundle the unit, filter replacements and servicing into a single monthly fee. Crucially, they support relocation within and across cities, directly addressing a key pain-point.

Taking this a step further, the ‘move-in-ready’ furnished apartment is now a functional one. Companies like Furlenco offer complete home furnishing solutions on a subscription basis to young professionals, who value a well-designed living space but are unwilling to invest in ownership.

This shift is even visible in the Great Indian Wedding, known globally for its extravagance. Jewellery and attire remain the largest single category of Indian wedding spend, at 25% of total costs, according to CAIT . Yet even here, ownership is losing ground. Platforms like Flyrobe let a bride wear a designer lehenga – a garment she may wear only once – for a fraction of its sticker price. Similarly a single wedding may have a number of functions or ceremonies, many guests choose to rent jewellery and accessories rather than splurge on multiple ensembles necessitated by increasingly specific dress codes. If access-based consumption can take root in a category this emotionally and socially loaded, it signals a genuine change in what ownership means to Indian consumers.

. Digital and ecosystem drivers

Crucially, the infrastructure that enables access has arrived, resting on two pillars: financial systems that make payments seamless and operational systems that ensure reliability. UPI autopay, Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) platforms and a proliferation of app-based services have reduced the friction around subscribing to near-zero. What once required paperwork and branch visits now happens remotely, digitally and in real-time.

While payment platforms have eased subscription billing, on the operational side, players such as Furlenco , Rentomojo and Urban Company have built an operational backbone, including delivery, maintenance and reverse logistics, that makes recurring access commercially viable at scale.

. Risk transfer as a driver

Lastly, one of the most compelling drivers of the access economy is risk transfer. Ownership comes with anxieties: refrigerators break down, smartphones rapidly becomes obsolete, an EV’s battery life may impede its overall resale value. Access models absorb these risks, bundling maintenance, upgrades and protection into a single recurring fee. Water purifier AMCs, appliance protection plans and device insurance subscriptions all reflect the simple insight that consumers will pay a predictable premium to avoid unpredictable costs . In categories defined by rapid innovation cycles, the fear of being stuck with yesterday’s product is an equally powerful motivator to subscribe rather than purchase outright.

. How Companies Can Benefit from Access Economics Access models change the underlying economics of a business and reward companies that are willing to rebuild around recurring relationships rather than one-time/infrequent transactions.

. Predictable recurring revenue

One immediate and highly tangible benefit is that revenues become episodic instead of ad hoc. Monthly subscription fees create a visible, predictable and plannable revenue stream. For CFOs, this translates into higher-quality earnings, reduced seasonality and more accurate forward forecasting. For the business as a whole, a subscriber base is an asset that supports better capital allocation, stronger relationships with lenders and a more defensible competitive position.

. Lower customer acquisition costs over time

Paradoxically, despite requiring companies to invest more in ongoing service delivery, access models often reduce the effective cost of customer acquisition over the long run. A subscriber retained across multiple upgrade cycles does not need to be re-acquired. The sales and marketing investments made to onboard a customer amortises across years of recurring revenue instead of a single transaction.

Cross-selling and wallet share

By definition, subscribers to one access-economy service demonstrate a behavioural willingness that makes them receptive to adjacent ones . A home-appliance subscriber might later rent furniture, or a car-lease customer may opt into a home-services bundle. Platforms that earn trust in one category are able to move into adjacent ones and capture a disproportionate share of an individual’s overall spend. Instead of the end goal, the first subscription becomes an entry point into a larger, compounding relationship.

Faster upgrade cycles and margin improvement

In traditional ownership models, the pace of product replacement is set by the consumer’s tolerance for living with an ageing asset. In access models, upgrade cycles are structured into the commercial relationship itself, allowing companies to introduce new products on a cadence that serves both the consumer’s desire for the latest technology and the company’s interest in safeguarding margins. For electronics and appliance manufacturers, this also unlocks a monetisation opportunity in the refurbishment and resale of returned assets through secondary markets, recovering value that would otherwise depreciate to zero on a customer's shelf. Similarly, in furniture, the shift to hybrid work has created sustained demand for ergonomic, frequently refreshed home office setups, unlocking a recurring upgrade cycle. Companies that redesign around modular, durable, easy-assembly SKUs capable of surviving multiple delivery and refurbishment cycles can capture a category that is growing markedly faster than their original market. Planned upgrade cycles thus improve margin predictability and support SKU roadmap planning. They also create a natural ‘sales moment’ that does not rely on convincing a consumer to replace an older asset.

Service reliability as a competitive moat

For access-economy companies, service is the core product, and providing it well directly bolsters the P&L account. A consumer who subscribes to a water purifier, a car lease or a home-repair platform is really purchasing the certainty of reliable, on-time and accountable service when something goes wrong. Rather than forcing them to compete on price, this enables companies to charge a premium over unorganised, one-off alternatives. Urban Company's rise illustrates this point perfectly. It may not always be cheaper than a local electrician or plumber, but consumers are willing to pay slightly more for the consistency and quality on offer. The ability to deliver reliable service at scale, across a fragmented network of individual professionals, is a competitive differentiator that not even a well-funded competitor can copy in the short run.

The data advantage

Access models yield frequent, high-quality behavioural data that ownership-centred sales models simply cannot match. Subscribers to an appliance service generate ongoing usage data, such as how often the product is used, when it is serviced, patterns of engagement, etc. This enables the business to personalise its relationship with the consumer, deepen loyalty and create natural upsell opportunities. Rich data sets allow for precise forecasts around churn, upgrade moments and retention-related interventions. In a competitive environment, this advantage compounds over time, creating a data moat that ownership-focused competitors find hard to replicate.

. Risks, Constraints and Industry Watchouts Subscription fatigue is a clear risk. As recurring commitments multiply, consumers will face growing pressure to rationalise their monthly outgo, and a non-essential subscription that, in isolation, once looked like good value, can quickly become a candidate for cancellation. Piracy sites logged 216 bn visits globally in 2024, with OTT subscription overload most frequently cited as a contributing factor, though other drivers, such as pricing and platform fragmentation, likely played a role too. High churn erodes the unit economics that make access models attractive in the first place. In asset-heavy categories, operational complexity is equally dangerous. Reverse logistics, refurbishment and quality control create real costs, and the assumption that asset-light subscription economics apply to physical goods can be fatal. Regulatory scrutiny, particularly around BNPL and deferred-payment structures, and the e-Waste burden generated by high volumes of returned and end-of-life products, are two further risks that the industry has not yet fully priced in.

. Strategic Questions for CXOs As the access economy matures, business leaders looking to reevaluate traditional models should ask themselves the following:

1. Is my category suited to access, and which parts of my portfolio should I prioritise? The sweet spot lies in categories with high upfront costs, rapid obsolescence or maintenance anxiety. Within a broader range, some SKUs will lend themselves to structured upgrade cycles more naturally than others.

2. Do I build the service layer myself, or partner with an existing platform? Some companies will find it faster and cheaper to plug into an established service network, for instance IKEA India’s partnership with Urban Company , than to build professional-grade service delivery in-house. However, partnering also means ceding the customer relationship, and more importantly, the data advantage that comes with it, to the platform.

3. How do I convert ownership customers into subscribers? This requires identifying which customers are most likely to respond to a subscription offer, designing low-friction entry points and building the operational infrastructure to serve a recurring revenue model.

4. How does access impact working capital and inventory planning? Access models in physical goods categories tie up capital in asset pools, and financial metrics must reflect the long-term value of a subscriber relationship rather than single-period revenue.

5. Do I have the organisational capabilities to succeed in access? CRM, behavioural analytics, reverse logistics and retention management are not capabilities most product companies have built. An honest gap assessment is a prerequisite for any successful transition.