Tech, telecom firms roll out freebies for Diwali

IT and telecommunications players have rolled out out-of-the-box offers to catch the fancy of the customers this Diwali. While some are offering free festive apps, others are offering rebates on talk time and some others are offering freebies.

Microsoft and Amazon are offering a discount of Rs.4,000 on the Xbox One and giving the FIFA 15 game free. The Xbox One video game console is currently available on Amazon.in for Rs.35,990.

To add to the fun this festive season, mobile handset maker Blackberry is offering its users free applications like Diwali Greetings for BlackBerry 10, Indian Sweets Recipes, Party Planning, Party Games, Cocktail Mixer Remixed, Search for Amazon and Flipkart Store Browser.

Telecom service provider Vodafone India has launched a Bumper Two-Day Diwali Flash Sales. Pre-paid customers in Delhi and NCR have to check with the service provider Oct 19-20 for the offer they are eligible for. Depending on eligibility one can get up to 80 percent off on various segments like internet, SMS, voice and bonus card deals.

"As the entire region gets into festive mood, we hope to add to their joy through this exciting customer connect initiative and make this the festive season even more memorable for our subscribers," Subrat Padhi, business head - Delhi, Vodafone India, told IANS.

South Korean electronics major Samsung has introduced exciting promotional offers on home appliances and audio visual products. These include assured gifts, instant cash back, free installation and service schemes.

"We are offering complimentary gifts such as free tablets with premium Samsung Smart TVs for customers to get a state-of-the-art interactive experience. During this high footfall period, we have also deployed additional manpower and trained our entire workforce across our retail network to give a world-class brand experience to our customers," Ranjivjit Singh, senior vice president, corporate marketing, South West Asia, Samsung Electronics, told IANS.

"Samsung has been witnessing very encouraging growth across our portfolio in consumer durables, surpassing the industry growth rate which has started reflecting in growing market shares across our product portfolio. We are expecting further increase in our market shares this festive season," he added.

As part of the Online Shopping Dhamaka, Amazon.in hosted the Diwali Dhamaka Week October 10-16. It offered great deals across hundreds of products from all categories enabling great savings for customers every day and every hour on their festive shopping.

"The response from customers on the first day of the Diwali Dhamaka Week went beyond our wildest expectations as we surpassed our biggest day - the last day of our Mission to Mars celebrations - in a matter of few hours. Traffic on that day was 200 percent more than that on our previous biggest day," an Amazon India spokesperson told IANS.

"We saw a massive interest from all over the country including Tier-2 markets like Pune, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Surat, Vizag, Coimbatore, Patna, Bhopal, Nagpur, Chandigarh and Lucknow.

"Our seller clubs that have Rs.10 lakh-plus and Rs.1 crore-plus weekly sales increased by 44 percent and 26 percent respectively during the Diwali Dhamaka Week and sellers received orders from 868 non-metro cities," the spokesperson added.

To make Diwali more exciting, OPPO Mobiles India has launched a contest on Facebook that gives users a chance to win the Diwali Bonanza - home digitization products worth Rs.5 lakh - as the grand prize while 10 other winners can take home an OPPO N1 worth Rs.32,990 signed by superstar and OPPO brand ambassador Hrithik Roshan.

The Chinese smartphone brand entered the Indian market earlier this year.

(Aparajita Gupta can be contacted at aparajita.g@ians.in)