National, September 16, 2026: STAN, India’s social gaming and creator platform, has recorded 15X growth in monthly buyers on StanShop over the last six months, with 70% of purchases now coming from repeat customers, as Gen Z and users from Tier-2 cities emerge as key contributors to the platform’s growing digital commerce business.
StanShop, STAN’s gaming commerce layer, enables users to purchase digital products including gaming gift cards, game credits, top-ups and vouchers within the same ecosystem where they discover creators, connect with other gamers and participate in gaming communities.
The platform’s growth is taking place within STAN’s young, Gen Z-heavy audience, with digital purchases increasingly becoming a recurring part of how younger users participate in gaming. Rather than being limited to one-time transactions, the company is seeing users return to make purchases around the games and digital experiences they already engage with.
Tier-2 and Tier-3 markets are also central to STAN’s broader ecosystem, accounting for around 67% of its user base and nearly 72% of monetised engagement, according to company data. These users also record 17–18% higher ARPU than those in Tier-1 cities, highlighting the role of Bharat users in the ecosystem within which its commerce layer is growing.
The 70% repeat purchase rate is particularly significant. Rather than acquiring users specifically to shop, the platform is seeing members of its existing gaming community return for recurring digital purchases. This creates a natural progression from community and engagement to commerce, with transactions becoming another layer of how users participate within the platform.
The model reflects a broader shift in India’s gaming ecosystem. With more than 500 million gamers in the country, the opportunity is increasingly moving beyond simply adding players towards building deeper relationships around creators, communities, identity and digital spending.
For the company, the growth of StanShop points towards a community-first approach to gaming commerce: build the community first, then create relevant products and transactions around how that community already behaves.
“The most interesting part for us is not just the growth in buyers, but that people are coming back to buy again. StanShop is about making the products they already use as gamers available within that experience. The 15X growth and 70% repeat purchases give us early evidence that commerce can grow naturally from community,” said Parth Chadha, Co-Founder & CEO, STAN.
This community-first approach also sits within the company’s growing engagement with the Japanese gaming ecosystem, supported by its existing relationships with Sony and Bandai Namco, both investors in the company. These relationships connect the India-built platform with two of the world’s most established gaming and entertainment ecosystems.
Building on these relationships, STAN will participate in Tokyo Game Show 2026, one of the world’s major gaming industry events, where it will engage with publishers, gaming companies and other industry stakeholders as it explores taking its India-built community and commerce model to international markets.
The platform currently brings together more than 50 million users across gaming, creators and communities. Its evolution into digital commerce through StanShop represents a broader ambition: to build an ecosystem where gamers do not just consume content or make isolated transactions, but rather discover, connect, participate and transact within communities they already belong to.
Having built and tested this model in India, STAN sees the next opportunity in taking it to the wider global gaming ecosystem. The Tokyo Game Show represents taking an India-built model of real gaming communities, creators and commerce to a global audience.
