Amazon to kick off month-long flagship sale Great Indian Festival on Oct 4

GIF 2021 is dedicated to small sellers including over 75,000 local shops from 450 cities, offering their unique selection of products to customers across the country

E-commerce firm Amazon’s festive event, ‘The Great Indian Festival’ (GIF) 2021 will start from October 4, 2021 for a month (30 days). The company said the Amazon GIF 2021 is dedicated to lakhs of small sellers including over 75,000 local shops from 450 cities, offering their unique selection of products to customers across the country. The event will also showcase products from sellers under various other programs such as Amazon Launchpad, Amazon Saheli, Amazon Karigar, as well as top Indian and global brands across categories.

“This year’s Great Indian Festival is a celebration of the resilience of local shops and small and medium sellers,” said Manish Tiwary, vice president, Amazon India. “We are humbled by their spirit and delighted with the opportunity to partner and enable their growth, especially in view of recent challenges owing to the pandemic.”

During this year’s GIF, over 850,000 sellers are offering crores of products to customers on Amazon, including unique products from Indian SMBs and local shops. The GIF event this year would include over 1,000 new product launches from top brands such as Samsung, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Sony and Apple. The other such brands include boAt, Lenovo, HP, Asus, Fossil, Levi’s, Bajaj, Lakme, Maybelline and Tata Tea.

To ensure safe, fast and reliable deliveries, and to serve customer demand during GIF, Amazon India has created more than 110,000 seasonal job opportunities across its operations network. The company has expanded its fulfilment network by increasing its storage capacity by 40 per cent with more than 60 fulfilment centres in 15 states offering 43 million cubic feet to its selle It also ramped up its delivery infrastructure and has close to 1,700 Amazon-owned and partner delivery stations, close to 28,000 ‘I Have Space’ partners and thousands of Amazon Flex delivery partners to serve customers in the farthest parts of the country.

As per a recent study commissioned by Amazon India and conducted by Nielsen, sellers on the marketplace are optimistic about this festive season. About 98 per cent of the surveyed sellers said that technology adoption and e-commerce have positively impacted their business. More than 78 per cent of the surveyed Amazon sellers expect to reach out to new customers, 71 per cent mentioned an increase in their sales and 71 per cent mentioned a recovery in their business as their top expectations from the festive season.

Customers can get a wide range of affordable options with Amazon Pay ICICI Bank credit card to get 5 per cent reward points with Rs 750 as a joining bonus, signing up for Amazon Pay Later to get a flat Rs 150 back along with instant credit up to Rs 60,000. They can get rewards worth Rs 1000 back for customers who use Rs 1,000 gift cards, rewards worth Rs 200 by adding money to the Amazon Pay balance, and 10 per cent cashback up to Rs 100 on shopping when using Amazon Pay UPI.

Customers can use the ‘Speak to Shop’ feature on the Amazon shopping app or just ask Alexa on their Amazon Shopping app (Android only). They can also use it to pay utility bills, load money in Amazon Pay, or navigate to the small business store.

Bulk discounts and deals with GST (goods and services tax) invoices are being offered for business buyers on Amazon Business: Amazon Business customers in India will be able to avail exclusive offers, bulk discounts, lower festive price offers, cashback, rewards, for their regular business buying or corporate gifting for clients or employees. Customers will save 28 per cent more with GST invoices on all transactions across categories like laptops, printers, networking devices, office electronics, vacuum cleaners from top brands like HP, Lenovo, Canon, Godrej, Casio and Eureka Forbes.

Rival company Walmart-owned Flipkart is will kick off the country’s festive season with the 8th edition of its biggest flagship event, The Big Billion Days (TBBD), from October 7-12. The six-day event will see millions of consumers, sellers, small businesses, artisans, Kiranas, brands and e-commerce ecosystem partners come together for the upcoming festive season. Flipkart is wooing 'kiranas' for upcoming festive season sales. Today one-third of all shipments of Flipkart Group is managed by kiranas at the last mile. According to the sources, the company is expecting 90 million shipments. More than 200,000 truckers would be part of the ecosystem. Over 100,000 kiranas have been onboarded by Flipkart to reach consumers across thousands of cities.

E-commerce firms Amazon, Flipkart, and others are expected to witness blockbuster festive season sales of about $9 billion this year surpassing the pre-pandemic sales of $5 billion witnessed during the festive month in 2019, according to consulting firm RedSeer. The pandemic has accelerated the shift to e-commerce, with an increasing number of consumers shopping online at a higher frequency than last year, according to analysts.

Amazon’s Great Indian Sale 2021

• 850,000 sellers, offering crores of products to customers on Amazon.in, including unique products from Indian SMBs and local shops.

• 1,000 new product launches and offers across categories including grocery, fashion and beauty, smartphones, large appliances and TVs.

• Customers can shop in languages of their choice including English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, Bangla and Marathi.

• They can also shop using their voice in Hindi and English using Alexa.

• They can save up to Rs 5,000 by making payments through Amazon Pay.

• 10% instant discount on HDFC Bank credit and debit cards and EMI Transactions.

• No-cost EMI on debit and credit cards and Amazon Pay Later.