By guest author Suneera Tandon from Live Mint
The pandemic has seen a shift in consumer spending, benefiting some categories like packaged food, electronics, e-commerce, while hurting discretionary goods, entertainment, eating out, and travelling.

Indians used credit cards to spend more on food, groceries, shopping, and pay utility bills in 2020, as spends on travel and entertainment dipped sharply, as per data by credit card payment services company Cred that scanned spends of 1 million members across India’s top cities.
The data captures four periods, including pre-lockdown, lockdown, unlock, and the year-end festive season, across several categories such as shopping, food, utilities, travel, spends on fuel, and insurance.