As the first week of festive sales closed on the various e-commerce platforms, it witnessed a revival of consumer demand compared with last year.

Overall, e-commerce platforms including social commerce and grocery are said to have garnered $2.7 billion in sales in the first week (October 2-5) of this year’s festive sale, according to RedSeer Consulting. The consulting firm has forecast that e-commerce platforms will clock over $9 billion gross merchandise value (GMV) during the whole festive season, which would be a growth of 23 per cent from last year.

Festival Sales: E-commerce firms report a jump in demand from Tier 2 and beyond

While Snapdeal reported a 98 per cent jump in its festival sale volumes from last year, Flipkart said that this year’s Big Billion Days (TBBD) has been steeped in the spirit of revival and growth. E-commerce logistics and shipping aggregator Pickrr also told BusinessLine that the number of daily shipments handled by the company has tripled this festive season as compared to last season.

“We are doing approximately 1.5 lakh shipments a day, which is almost three times the number of orders we were shipping during the last festive season. As we near the festive season, this number is expected to grow further,” said Rhitiman Majumder, Co-Founder and CEO, Pickrr.

Further, Flipkart noted that 10 per cent of the sellers witnessed a 3X growth in sales this year. Top artisans and weaver partners from Flipkart Samarth witnessed a growth of 6X compared to TBBD 2020. The Samarth initiative, which was started in 2019, aims to uplift and embrace India’s artisans, weavers and micro-enterprises into the e-commerce fold.

Meanwhile, Snapdeal noted that its total value of sales from Tier 3 towns has increased by 74 per cent over last year and about a 90 per cent jump in the case of Tier 2 cities. Also, nearly 60 per cent of Snapdeal’s total orders are said to have come from Tier 3 towns during this period. Tier 1 & 2 cities accounted for nearly 26 per cent of orders while metro buyers accounted for the balance 14 per cent.

Online festival sales to clock GMV of $9 billion: RedSeer

Last week, the first day of the sale was termed as the biggest-ever day of sales for Flipkart-owned brand Myntra, recording 19 million visitors on that day. At that time, Amazon had also reported a 60 per cent increase in sellers who received their highest ever single-day sales year-on-year on Amazon.

Tier-3 cities and beyond

Across e-commerce platforms, the consumer demand from Tier 2, 3 and beyond cities has increased as compared to last year. Walmart-owned Flipkart saw about 45 per cent of customer demand from tier 3 cities and beyond. Amazon noted that the number of sellers receiving orders from Tier 2, 3 cities has jumped by 21 per cent over last year and 2 out of 3 new Amazon Prime sign-ups have also come from Tier 2,3 cities and customers.

Indian e-commerce platform Snapdeal too has reported about 43 per cent of its orders flowing from Tier-3 cities like Dhanbad, Karimnagar, Gorakhpur, Chittor, Kurnool, Srinagar, Guntur and Alwar, in the initial days of the festive sale season. Myntra reported customers shopping over 4 million items on the first day of its festive sale, of which 40 per cent of the orders were from tier-2 and 3 cities and beyond.

comment COMMENT NOW