Sellers from towns drive e-commerce giant Flipkart's Freedom sales

E-commerce giant Flipkart said its marketplace platform recorded a 54 per cent increase over the last year in transacting sellers during the five-day Independence Day sales.

The event, which concluded on August 10, saw participation from sellers primarily from tier-2 cities that have now become local businesses with strong growth pipelines.

“With businesses across India rethinking their operations in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, e-commerce has emerged the preferred channel to connect with consumers,” said the company.

Since the lockdown, Flipkart saw an increased interest from sellers to join the platform, onboarding 8,000 businesses to its online marketplace, with more than 70 per cent of them coming from smaller towns.

Flipkart is offering free business incubation support for the new sellers for the first 60 days. This includes equipping them with insights in matters of product support, advertising, and speed support.

This Independence Day being the first major sale-event for the newly onboarded sellers, the marketplace saw maximum participation of sellers from New Delhi, followed by Surat, Jaipur, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Ghaziabad, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Agra. Subsequently, cities such as Dharuhera, Datia, Harapanahalli, Cachar, Motihari, Purnia, Tezpur, Sibsagar, Dholpur and Etawah became the new cities that saw the highest number of seller participation.

Bhupendra Patel, one of the sellers from Panipat, said his online business — Home Sizzlers — of selling curtains and bedsheets almost doubled this season. Madhusudan, a seller on Flipkart by the name TRIPR, saw men’s and kid’s wear business 2.5x growth in terms of number of orders during the sale.