Google’s Nano Banana Image-Generation model is officially known as the Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, and has been driving the global momentum of the Gemini app since its launch last month. However, in India, even as privacy and safety concerns begin to emerge, retro portraits and local trends have gone viral, leading a unique, creative life.
India has emerged as the number one country for the use of nano bananas. According to David Sharon, Google Deepmind’s Gemini app multimodal generation lead spoke at a media session this week. The popularity of this model led the Gemini app to the top of the free app charts on both the App Store and India’s Google Play. According to AppFigures, the app also rose to the top of the global app store charts.
India’s Size – Given the world’s second largest smartphone market and the second largest online population after China, it’s no surprise that the country leads adoption. But what’s attracting Google’s attention is not just people using nanobananas, but millions of Indians are involved in AI models locally and in some cases in completely unexpected ways.
One outstanding trend is to use nano bananas to replicate retro looks inspired by Bollywood of the 1990s, and complete period-specific fashion, hairstyles and makeup, imagining how they appeared in that era. The trend is in India’s local, Sharon told reporters.
The retro trend variation is what some call “AI Saree” and users generate vintage style portraits of themselves wearing traditional Indian attire.
Another trend in India is those who generate their own selfies in front of urban landscapes and iconic landmarks, such as Big Ben and the UK’s retro phone booths.
“I saw a lot of that at first,” Sharon said.
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Also, Indian users are experimenting with nano bananas to transform objects, create time travel effects, and rethink them as retro postal stamps. Others have produced black and white portraits and used models to visualize their encounters with their younger selves.
Although some of these trends did not arise in India, the country played an important role in helping them attract global attention. One example is the trend in figurines where people generate miniature versions of themselves and often place them in front of a computer screen. This trend first appeared in Thailand, spreading to Indonesia and became global after gaining traction in India, Sharon said.
In addition to Nano Banana, Google has observed a trend in Indian users using the VEO 3 AI video generation model in the Gemini app to create short videos from old photos of their grandparents and great grandparents.
All of this helped to promote Gemini’s popularity on both the App Store and Google Play in India. Between January and August, the app saw an average of 1.9 million monthly downloads across the country (about 55% more than the US), accounting for 16.6% of global monthly downloads for each data shared solely with TechCrunch.
Up until August this year, India’s downloads totaled 15.2 million. Meanwhile, the US has made 9.8 million downloads so far this year, according to data.
Daily downloads of the Indian Gemini app have skyrocketed significantly following the release of the Nano Banana Update, starting 55,000 installations from September 1st. Downloads peaked at 414,000 on September 13th – 667% increase – keeping the overall spot on iOS App Store since September 10th, and data is shown on Google Play since September 12th, including all categories.
Despite India’s leading downloads, the country has not outperformed in-app purchases with the Gemini app. This has generated an estimated $6.4 million in global consumer spending since IOS, according to Appfigures. The US has the largest share at $2.3 million (35%), while India has donated $95,000 (1.5%). However, India recorded a record 18% increase in spending, reaching $13,000 between September 1st and 16th. This will make India 7% points above the global rate and 17 points ahead of the US, where growth rate is below 1%.
That said, like with other AI apps, there are concerns that users will upload personal photos to Gemini to change the look.
“When a user asks to satisfy a query, we do our best to satisfy that query. We don’t try to assume what the user’s intentions are,” Sharon said while working on questions about how he handles data misuse and privacy concerns among users in India and other top markets, “We will do our best.” “We have tried to improve it, but we’ve improved it and now we’re bold and fulfilled your demands.”
Google places a diamond-shaped visible watermark expression in the images generated by the Nano Banana model, and embeds hidden markers using the SynthID tool to identify AI-generated content. SynthID allows Google to use the model to detect and flag whether an image was created.
Sharon told reporters that Google is testing its detection platform with trusted testers, researchers and other experts. The company will also launch a consumer version that anyone can check if the images are generated by AI.
“This is still the first day, we are still learning, we are learning together. There are things we may need to improve in the future, and that’s feedback from users, press, academia and experts that will help us improve,” Sharon said.
