E-commerce companies clock sales worth $1.5 bn in less than 3 days of festive sale

RedSeer estimates that the industry is on track to reach $3 billion by the end of the five-day festive sale period.
E-commerce companies clock sales worth $1.5 bn in less than 3 days of festive sale
E-commerce companies clock sales worth $1.5 bn in less than 3 days of festive sale

Festive season sales have kicked off in India and in less than three days of the sale, e-commerce companies have crossed sales worth $1.5 billion. According to a RedSeer report, while this number was achieved in the first 2.5 days of the sales, it estimated that the industry is on track to reach $3 billion by the end of the five-day festive sale period.

Flipkart and Amazon, on the other hand, have both been claiming victory, calling this their biggest sale ever. Flipkart claims that October 11, 2018 was the single biggest sales day in the history of Indian retail. During the Big Billion Day sale, Flipkart claims that there were 1 million users on the app at any given point and the overall numbers clocked during the sale last year were completed in just 26 hours this year.

According to Amazon India, its Great Indian Festival 2018, October 10, the first day of the sale, was the biggest day ever with record-breaking sales across categories. It claims that it saw a 2.7X growth in customer acquisition from Tier II and III cities. Over 1,300 sellers crossed the millionaire mark, Amazon claims.

Category-wise breakup

Overall, while mobiles clocked the highest number of sales in terms of value, fashion saw a greater number of items being sold. RedSeer estimates that mobiles clocked sales of $800 million by the end of October 11, having sold 4.6 million units.

For Amazon, smartphones led the opening day sales with three out of four phones sold in the country being on Amazon.in. Xiaomi and OnePlus led the pack.

Flipkart sold one million smartphones an hour and over three million in a day. It claims to have garnered a market share of 85-90% with Xiaomi, Samsung and Honor leading the pack.

Large appliances also saw massive demand, clocking $170 million worth of sales and selling 0.6 million units.

Amazon claims that large appliances saw a massive 30X growth over an average business day driven by huge spike in all key categories such as TVs, refrigerators, washing machines, dishwashers among others. Brands such as BPL, LG and Bosch saw massive demand.

Flipkart, on its part, claims that 1 in 4 TVs worldwide was bought on its site on October 10, 2018.

Fashion was the other category that saw massive demand. Overall, RedSeer estimates that this category clocked sales of $120 million, having sold 10.3 million units.

Amazon claims that fashion witnessed an ‘unprecedented rush on Day 1’. While Amazon’s own brands in the fashion category saw a 400% growth in sales over last year, Apparel was the largest category on Amazon Fashion with more than double the sales compared to last year.

According to data from Flipkart, Flipkart Fashion sold more watches on day 1 than what top 5 offline retailers sell in a month. Customers reportedly bought more branded and higher value items during the sale than non-sale days.

This year also marks the first sale since Flipkart launched its loyalty program ‘Flipkart Plus’ to take on Amazon. As per a statement from the company, early access to Plus members proved to be a major attraction for customers with over 30% of all purchases coming from them.

Amazon, which has also been aggressively pushing its Prime offering, saw more than 2X members joining Prime during the early access period over last year, attracted by the deals and fast delivery promises.

The sales, however, are still going on and both e-commerce majors are expecting to double the numbers by the end of – what they claim – is the biggest sale season ever.

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