With major e-commerce festive season sales coming to a close, the industry has generated sales of around Rs 15,000 crore ($2.3 billion), according to RedSeer Consulting’s estimates. This is a 64% growth over last year, where e-commerce companies clocked sales worth $1.4 billion.
The biggest battle, however, was between Flipkart and Amazon, both claiming the sale to be their biggest ever.
According to the RedSeer report, the key drivers of the festive season sales included very high awareness of sales amongst the online population, increase in shoppers from from Tier 2, 3 towns, new affordability schemes, bank and wallet offers and loyalty schemes and subscription services.
Flipkart claims that it saw a big shift in customers from Tier 3 and below cities. Close to 40% of customers for the Private Brands portfolio came from Tier 3 and below towns, and over 12% of them were new to Flipkart and e-commerce.
In fact, Amazon claims that more than 82% new customers coming to Amazon.in during this sale were from smaller towns and cities. With the launch of its Hindi website, new customers grew by 2.4X over a normal business day.
“We have received an overwhelming response to the 5th Great Indian Festival, with sales in the first 36 hours nearly surpassing entire first wave last year and the event exceeding our most aggressive plans across all categories. With 3x times surge in Prime member signups across the country, more than 80% of new customers coming from small towns, and orders from 99% of serviceable pin-codes in just 4 days, we are humbled that Amazon.in is trusted by India to find, discover, and buy anything online.” said Amit Agarwal, Senior Vice President and Country Head, Amazon India said in a statement.
Flipkart on its part, has been claiming since the sale began that the Big Billion Days sale smashed all records in the retail industry. In a statement from the company, Flipkart claims to have recorded over 70% share of entire Indian e-commerce market in the 5-day sale. GMV too, 80% over last year whereas units grew by close to 2X year-on-year. There was almost 50% growth in new customers as compared to the sale last year.
Digital payments offers and affordability schemes also were a major driver of sales this festive season. Amazon claims that over 70% of its EMI customers came from Tier 2 and below towns. Three out four customers who shopped using EMIs availed the benefit of No-cost EMIs across Credit, Debit, Bajaj Finserv cards and Amazon Pay EMIs.
One out of two shoppers during the Big Billion Days sale on Flipkart used affordable payment options such as EMIs and bank offers driving 60% of overall sales and enabling customers to upgrade products in categories like Mobile, TVs and laptops.