More shoppers spent on Flipkart than Amazon in Jan-March quarter: Report

Home-grown e-commerce firm Flipkart has beaten its rival and global giant Amazon in spending by shoppers in the January-March quarter, an analysis of the Indian digital economy by RedSeer has revealed. 

According to the report, Flipkart’s "strong focus on high-value categories like mobiles and large goods has enabled it to have the highest percentage of high-spending shoppers on its platform". 

Of all the shoppers spending more than Rs 5,000 on their purchases, 29 per cent selected Flipkart, 22 per cent picked Amazon, while 16 per cent went with Snapdeal. Myntra netted five per cent of such shoppers, while Jabong accounted for 9 per cent. 

Ordering online? Your orders will reach you faster

However, the competition between the e-commerce giants aside, online shoppers have a good reason to cheer, according to the report. Across India, "e-tailers have brought down average delivery times to just above four days," with more than 18 per cent orders getting delivered within two days of ordering itself. Further, according to the report, differences in delivery speed across players are "consistently coming down". This, the report adds, will ensure "a highly reliable experience as a customer".

To be exact, the average delivery time has come down to 4.1 days in the first quarter of calendar year 2017 from 4.7 days in the same quarter of 2016. 

What about wallets?

Since re-monetisation, consumer preference for online wallets has declined, even though offline merchants continue to accept payments from such platforms, the report said. 

"Demonetisation had forced huge swathes of consumers to quickly adapt to the digital wallets lifestyle. But, post re-monetisation, consumers are back to their beloved cash as indicated by a fall in average wallet balance as well as the average number of wallet transactions per month per consumer. Yet, it is not all bad news, as indicated by the continued high willingness of merchants to accept wallet payments," the report said.