Flipkart beats Amazon in festive season sales, captures 50% market share

Flipkart beat Amazon in sales during this year's festive season by a huge margin, reported the Economic Times. The Indian e-marketplace captured 50% of the festive market, while the American e-commerce behemoth trailed as the runner-up with a 35% share.

The Indian e-commerce market is reported to have grown by 40% in value over the last year. Online sales during the September-October festive season is estimated to have increased to $2.9 billion from $2 billion last year. 

Amazon is said to have pocketed just Rs 2,500-2,700 cr during its Great Indian Festival Sale in September as compared to Flipkart's Big Billion day jackpot of Rs 5,000 cr, according to Livemint. (However, ET reports that Flipkart may have sold only Rs 4,300 cr worth of products, a number that is still way ahead of Amazon India's)

Livemint quotes Manish Tiwary, vice president (category management) at Amazon India as saying, “Amazon.in remains the largest marketplace and the fastest growing one in Indian e-commerce landscape. The recently concluded Great Indian Festival has been our biggest shopping event till date with a remarkable spike in customer acquisition from tier-II and tier-III cities across India, with 85% of new customers coming from these areas. We saw a tremendous customer response across categories—from high-value products such as smartphones and appliances to everyday essentials such as shampoos, biscuits and pet supplies.”

However, Flipkart has fallen way behind its stated target of acquiring 70% of market share during the season, as reported by Business Standard earlier.

SimilarWeb, a website traffic tracker, says that Flipkart lagged behind Amazon in website visits. While Amazon notched up 276 million desktop visits for the quarter ended June 30, Flipkart could attract only 167.6 million. Further, Amazon clocked 311 million mobile website visits as compared to Flipkart's 157 million.