India has turned Google’s Nano Banana, as the colloquial nickname for the microcars is known, into a cultural playground. The image generator isn’t just fueling downloads — it’s sparking a wave of distinctly Indian creativity remaking what personal AI art looks like at scale.
An Indian wave even Freud might’ve had a hard time interpreting
From India, users have made the model a kind of mirror to nostalgia and pop culture. There are retro portraits in the style of 1990s Bollywood headshots, teased hair and matte lipstick, studio backdrops; there’s the “AI saree” twist, with which users drape themselves in time-worn silks and grainy film textures. It is not a matter of the generic filter; it’s about reviving fashion clichés and family album aesthetics on purpose.
Another hyperlocal flourish: selfie remixes that plunge users into global landmarks, including London’s Big Ben or classic red phone booths, and whimsical spins that reduce people to desk figurines — a meme that first percolated in Thailand, spread to Indonesia and blew up after igniting with Indian creators. Elsewhere, time-travel effects abound, black-and-white studio looks pile up and stamp-style frames are en vogue, as are speculative images where people “meet” their younger selves.
The numbers driving India’s Nano Banana surge
And the top market for Nano Banana use is India, says the Gemini Apps team at Google DeepMind. According to Appfigures’ estimates, India has driven the most downloads of the Gemini app globally this year through August with 15.2 million installs compared to 9.8 million in the United States. That led to a surge in installs in India following the Nano Banana update, from around 55,000 daily installs to a high of 414,000 — up 667% — and prompted momentum for Gemini on both major app stores in the country.
Monetization tells a different story. The app has pulled in an estimated $6.4 million from consumer spending on iOS to date, including approximately $2.3 million (or 36% of the total gross) in the U.S., which is its largest market. India’s share hovers near $95,000 (1.5%). But India’s momentum is particularly dramatic: monthly spending has climbed 18% month-over-month, ahead of the global increase of 11%, and far ahead of the U.S., where it barely budged. The pattern follows consumer internet behavior in India more broadly — massive reach, but relatively conservative per user spend — until utility and entertainment combine.
The scale advantage is obvious. India is the world’s second-largest smartphone market and one of the largest online populations. “India is too big not to dwell on — it’s got more smartphone users than the U.S. has people,” Gartner analyst Tuong Huy Nguyen told me last year, when GSMA Intelligence and IAMAI were spotlighting India’s disproportionate mobile use and social creation behaviors that fertilize AI image tools that reward experimentation and shareability.
Why the model works in India’s social media culture
Three forces are at work. First, AI portraiture is reaching into a rich tradition of personal photography — from corner-store studios that shoot weddings and festivals to the sprawl of WhatsApp family albums. Second, Indian creators remix global memes with local textures, rendering trends into regionally fluent shareable formats. Third, the model’s fast and low-friction prompts help first-time users to feel like art directors rather than filter-appliers.
And that crossover effect persists outside of stills. Indian users are also experimenting with Veo 3, Google’s video-generation model within Gemini, to animate old family photos — especially portraits of grandparents — which brings static images back to life in short but emotionally evocative clips. The use case is part of a growing digital nostalgia economy, which has already made some face-restoration and colorization apps popular.
Safety signals: watermarking and embedding
As personal photos rush into AI systems, the privacy questions become unavoidable. The multimodal generation lead for Gemini Apps at Google DeepMind, David Sharon, has stressed that the team is focused on meeting user intent while enhancing protections. Each Nano Banana output has a visible diamond-shaped watermark and an invisible SynthID marker, to make it easier for platforms that encompass the work of groundbreaking research.
Google is testing a detection website with trusted testers, universities and industry organizations to release to consumers. That could be a useful backstop for India’s teeming social platforms, where creative remixes speed along and provenance is hard to pin down. The catch will be coverage and robustness — watermarks can get cropped, markers can erode with edits, so detectors need to be resistant across transforms.
What’s next for Nano Banana in India’s creative scene
Expect the next wave to be a fusion of utility and artistry. Wedding and festival photographers might use the model for mood boards, costume ideas and backdrops; education creators could rely on it to produce visual explainers in regional languages; and indie brands might make campaign imagery that references local tastes without shelling out for shoots.
If India stays in the lead, it will help draw up the model’s roadmap as much as take advantage of it. Feedback loops from a large and expressive user base can pressure-test style controls, bias mitigations and safety features faster than just about anywhere else. In other words, India isn’t just where Nano Banana is popular — it’s where the future of everyday AI creativity is being prototyped before our eyes.
Sources
- Google DeepMind briefings
- Appfigures download and revenue estimates
- GSMA Intelligence and IAMAI reports on India’s mobile internet landscape
