Snapdeal on an app spree

Hits almost a million downloads on mobile platform on the first day of Appfest

E-commerce company Snapdeal has acquired a large number of new customers through its two-day Appfest that began on Thursday.

The New Delhi-based company, on the first day of the festival, was close to hitting 1 million downloads on the mobile platform. Till midday, a major part of the million downloads target was achieved, said company executives.

On the lines of rival Flipkart’s Big Billion Day sale, the Kunal Bahl-led Snapdeal started its two-day mega-sale through its app. Most e-commerce companies are now migrating users to mobile apps. Earlier in the month, Flipkart held a fashion sale. However, response from buyers was lukewarm on the first of the two-day event compared to what was seen during earlier discounts.

The company claimed 50 per cent of the shoppers on day one of the festival were first-time shoppers on Snapdeal. The festival will continue till midnight on Friday and is spread across fashion, electronics and home goods.

While customer acquisition turned out to be one of the key highlights of the event, Snapdeal saw its traffic growing by 10 times till Thursday evening. About 80,000 sellers on Snapdeal’s platform participated in the first day of the two-day festival.

“Mobile is the key driver for the growth of digital shopping in India and over 70 per cent of our customers use this platform. With this Appfest, we wanted to offer our customer an opportunity to shop for products at a great value. We have seen a 10x increase in the traffic on our mobile platform, of this 50 per cent are first-time shoppers,” , said Sandeep Komaravelly, senior vice-president at Snapdeal.

In line with Snapdeal's usual business, a major chunk of 55 per cent of new downloads came from tier II cities while tier I and tier III contributed 25 per cent each.

All major e commerce companies such as Flipkart, Snapdeal, Myntra, Jabong have been promoting mobile shopping via app as they feel this is the future of online shopping in the next couple of years in India. Most companies have seen at least half of their revenues come from sales order via mobile phones while Snpadeal has had its nose ahead in this aspect with over 65 per cent orders coming via smartphones.