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Led by Amazon and Flipkart, e-tailers have sold $3 billion or ₹19,000 crore worth of merchandise during the first six days of the festive season sale that concluded in the first week of October.
Sales grew 30 per cent year-on-year, up from $2.3 billion last year, with the major share coming from customers in Tier-2 cities and smaller towns led by the wide selection and affordability offers.
As in the previous years, mobile phones was the category leader contributing to over 55 per cent of gross merchandise value (GMV).
Given the strong performance by e-tailers, the whole festive month up to end October is expected to generate $6 billion (₹39,000 crore) in sales, reveals a report by RedSeer Consulting.
Bharat celebrates
“The first wave of the festival sale event has seen a record GMV of almost $3 billion despite a challenging macro environment, indicating that consumer sentiment on online shopping remains bullish.”
“The larger push has come from Bharat (non-metro) customers migrating to online shopping driven by the strong value provided from the online retailers across categories including mobiles, which have shown a strong surge during sale event despite having a relatively slow growing half year from January-June,” said Anil Kumar, Founder and CEO, RedSeer Consulting.
Flipkart vs Amazon
According to RedSeer, Flipkart continued to lead with 60-62 per cent in standalone gross GMV share during the sale and 63 per cent including group entities Myntra and Jabong; while Amazon’s share was pegged at 28-30 per cent and the rest by other e-tailers.
Strongly contesting RedSeer’s claim, an Amazon spokesperson said: “We cannot comment on speculative reports that lack robust and credible methodology. During the Great Indian Festival (September 28-October 4), Amazon led with the highest share of transacting customers at 51 per cent, order share of 42 per cent and value share of 45 per cent across all marketplaces in India, according to Nielsen’s E-Analytics empanelled read of 190,000 digital users across 50 plus cities.”
“With orders from 99.4 per cent pin codes, over 65,000 sellers from 500 plus cities receiving orders in just five days, customers from over 15,000 pin codes joining Prime and over 88 per cent new customers coming from small towns, this event has been our biggest celebration ever,” the Amazon spokesperson said.
The blockbuster festival season sales is no indication that the prevailing weak consumer sentiment will turn positive again.
This is because, e-commerce contributes a miniscule 2 per cent of retail sales. This means that online shoppers have utilised the opportunity to fulfil their requirements with the deep discount deals and this trend will continue throughout the festival season sale period till end October, pointed out K Vaitheeswaran, founder of Indiaplaza, the country’s first e-commerce company, and co-founder of Again Drinks.
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