Seven of 18 Indian Categories Peak in the Same Month

The test

A category has a season only if it passes this test.

We use four full calendar years. We drop the part years at each end. A year holding three months will peak in one of those three months, and that tells you nothing.

We find the peak month of the whole five-year series. We then find the peak month of each single year. At least three of the four years must peak in that same month, or in the month next to it.

One large peak is an event. A season is a peak that comes back.

Fourteen of the 18 pass. Seven of those fourteen peak in November: body lotion, lip balm, moisturizer, baby lotion, hair serum, shampoo, face serum. That is not a mixed calendar. That is one peak, and almost every personal care category sits on it.

The ten categories with a real season

Swing is the peak month divided by the lowest month. Both are measured against that category’s own five-year average.

Sunscreen peaks in March

Sunscreen is the exception. It peaks in March, and November is close to its lowest month. It swings 2.85 times, and all 4 years peak in Mar or Apr. The largest swing of all belongs to body lotion at 2.95 times.

India searches for sun protection two months before it searches for ice cream. Demand then falls for six months and reaches its lowest point in October.

A brand that starts a sunscreen campaign in May has missed the peak.

The test, drawn

Each row shows the month that one calendar year peaked in. A season reads as one month repeated. A failure reads as four different months.

The eight that failed, and why that matters more

These categories move. Hair serum moves 1.41 times between its high month and its low month. In a single year of data that looks like a season.

It is not one. Hair serum peaks in Nov across the four years. A founder who reads that swing as a season will buy stock for the wrong month.

How this was measured

We read five years of weekly Google Trends interest in India for each category, 261 weekly points per term, on 15 September 2026. A category counts as seasonal only if at least three of its four full calendar years peak in the same month as the whole series, or in the month next to it. Every month is measured against that category’s own five-year average, so the figures describe the shape of one category and never the size of one against another. Google publishes relative interest rather than a count, so no number here is a search volume or a market size, and search is not sales.

Related measurements

We measured the Amazon sunscreen shelf in August and the ice cream shelf on quick commerce in September. This study says when each category is searched. Those two say who holds it. The full library is at impuls8.com/reports.

Your own sales tell you your season. They cannot tell you the category’s season, because you only see the months you were in stock and the months you spent money. We measure a category on a cycle, with your competitors in it. That is what we do for enterprise clients.