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Practo, India’s healthcare platform, has shared insights based on evolving user behaviour and health attitudes, highlighting a significant shift in how Indians are engaging with their health. Over the past two years, awareness around key lifestyle conditions has risen sharply, with stronger growth now emerging from non-metro cities across India. The awareness increasingly reflected in specialist-led consultations, indicating a move toward more proactive and structured health management.
India is becoming significantly more aware and intentional about lifestyle diseases, with awareness signals across key conditions growing over 105% between 2023 and 2025. Within this, diabetes, cardiac conditions, and hypertension have each seen 100% growth in search interest over the past two years, while obesity-related searches have grown 60%. This shift is reflected in specialist consultations, particularly in cardiac and diabetes care over the past year, with consultations growing 20%, alongside an overall increase in lifestyle disease consultations.
While Tier 1 continues to account for a large share of overall volumes, awareness in Tier 2 cities is also deepening. Indians in Tier 2 are increasingly seeking to understand lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, heart conditions, and hypertension, with search growth over the past year significantly higher than Tier 1 - cardiac-related searches grew 17x higher, while diabetes and hypertension searches grew 2–2.5x higher.
Indians are increasingly making a clear medical connection to weight and related conditions, with metabolism-related searches growing 10x+, insulin resistance searches 9x+, and obesity-related searches increasing 60% over the past two years.
This shift is also reflected in how Indians are approaching weight management. The intent is also reflected in medical engagement, with consultations across diabetology and endocrinology growing 10% and 7% respectively between 2023 and 2025, indicating a steady increase in Indians seeking medical pathways to manage metabolic conditions.
While Tier 1 continues to account for a large share of overall volumes, awareness in Tier 2 cities is also deepening, with metabolism-related search growth 18x higher than Tier 1 and insulin-related growth 1.5x higher, alongside a steady rise across other chronic conditions.
Dr. Vishal Jani, head of research, Practo, said, “India’s chronic disease burden has been well documented, but what stands out here is a shift in how individuals are engaging with these conditions. Awareness is becoming more intentional, and more importantly, more connected to action. That transition from passive recognition to active engagement is a critical inflection point in how health outcomes can evolve at scale. The increasing focus on metabolic health suggests a more integrated understanding of how these conditions are interlinked. This is important because it reframes the discussion from a symptom-based view to one that emphasizes integrated healthcare and informed individual decision-making. As this shift extends beyond metros, it creates the conditions for more consistent and structured engagement with healthcare, where specialised consultations are likely to play a central role.”
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