E-commerce firms sell goods worth $4.1 bn in first week of festive sale

E-commerce firms reported a 55 per cent jump in sale goods to $4.1 billion (~29,000 crore) across platforms during the first week (October 15-21) of festive sales, research firm RedSeer said on Tuesday.
 
RedSeer, in its report, said the comparative number stood at $2.7 billion last year. RedSeer in its pre-festive sale had forecasted that platforms will clock $4 billion worth of sales.
 
Smartphones led the sale accounting for 47 per cent of total festive sales, driven by new launches and affordable models with Rs 1.5 crore worth of smartphones being sold every minute across the online platforms in the first week of 2020’s festive sales.

 

With a high share of tier-II and beyond shoppers coming in, Flipkart group emerged as overall leader during festive sales week one and accounted for 68 per cent of the total Flipkart group and Amazon sales (which together accounted for over 90 per cent of the total online sales during this period), the report said.
 
“E-commerce sector has exceeded the aggressive forecasts we made a few weeks before the festive season week 1 started. This points to a revival of consumption sentiment amongst Indian shoppers, driven by great prices and the safety of shopping from home,” Mrigank Gutgutia, director at RedSeer Consulting, said.

 
In many aspects this is indeed a ‘festival of firsts’ for Indian e-commerce, which will build a strong foundation for its future growth, he added.
 
The key factors that majorly boosted this year’s sale include affordability, mobile phones and tier-II growth wave.
 
These factors directly resulted in recovery of sales for brands and sellers, who have been strongly enabled by the online channels, to drive their sales growth which was affected by the Covid impact on offline channels, RedSeer said.
 
The report noted there was a massive addition of shoppers — the total shoppers during the first week jumped from 28 million last year to 52 million this year (85 per cent YoY).

 
Over 55 per cent of them came from tier-II cities like Asansol, Ludhiana, Dhanbad, Rajkot, among others — which proves a landmark achievement for e-commerce and points to the growing ‘democratisation’ and comfort with online shopping all over India, the report added.
 
Buyers preferred affordable price ranges this year for almost all product categories, instead of expensive items. The platforms enabled affordability this year with aggressive tie-ups through brands and financing deals, coming on the back of a bleak, pandemic-affected year, according to the report.
 
Fashion, while not as big a sales contributor as last year, showed resilience to reach 14 per cent of the festive days sales, despite the demand for formal and festive wear still being low, the report said.