What are the shopping trends looking like this festival season? Bloomberg TV India spoke to Rahul Taneja, Vice-President, Category Management at Snapdeal, to get a sneak peek.

How are things looking like this festival season?

This is the festival season. So we do see a natural surge in some kinds of products versus the usual part of the year.

We see an increase in demand for appliances, home entertainment, televisions, ethnic wear, a lot of home improvements or home furnishing products, not to mention the usual mobiles and tablets. We expect demand to increase many-fold versus last year.

How is South India looking in terms of shopping trends?

The interesting thing is that we did a Diwali preview sale on September 28 and we got the most amazing demand from the five southern States. This is unprecedented. The products (South looks for) are very similar to what is being bought in the rest of India with some specific differences in fashion and home products.

For example, consumers in the South look for wet mixer grinders versus dry mixer grinders in the North.

How are prices looking this season?

We cater to a very diverse set of consumers, both at the entry price points and at the very premium price points. So we see a fairly secular increase in demand across different consumer types.

How conservative or otherwise would you categorise the southern buyer?

The demand patterns are not very different based on the geography.

They are fairly similar if you were to compare a southern metro versus Mumbai or Delhi. A metro consumer — whether he or she is living in Bengaluru or Hyderabad or Chennai — tends to behave in a fairly similar fashion as any other metro consumer in India and similarly for a tire II city consumer. So I don’t see that difference in demand.

How big is jewellery as a segment in terms of sales both pan India and in the South?

Jewellery is one of our fastest growing categories today. Specifically we look at it in two parts: one is precious jewellery, which is made of gold and silver; the other is non-precious or artificial jewellery.

Both these segments are growing very well. In fact, precious jewellery has been doing especially well in the South, driven by a bunch of different products that we are launching with our sellers.

Again, if you were to ask me if the kind of jewellery being brought in the South is very different versus the North, yes there is a distinct difference.

There is a higher preference for gold in the South.

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