E-commerce majors see strong growth in apparel, large appliances as festive sale kicks off

E-commerce giants Flipkart and Amazon India have seen a strong start to their festive sale with categories like apparel and large appliances driving record transactions and new customers coming on board.

These companies have put in months of preparation in ramping up selection, setting up warehouses and strengthening delivery network ahead of the festive sale to ensure a smooth shopping experience for customers, with demand being much higher than on non-festive days.

Players like Flipkart, Amazon India and Paytm Mall kick-started their festive sale from October 10 that will continue for the next 5-6 days. More offers are expected to be rolled out over the next many days leading up to Diwali.

"The scale of Big Billion Days (festive sale of Flipkart) has only grown with each passing year and this year too, we expect the trend to continue. While each category sees manifold growth, we expect smartphones, large appliances and apparel to be phenomenally big categories," Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy told PTI.

He, however, declined to comment on the volume of business expected to be generated, saying "its early to speculate as the growth always end up surprising us".

Amit Agarwal, Senior Vice President and Country Head at Amazon India, said the first day of the Great Indian Festival 2018 has been the biggest day ever with record-breaking sales across categories.

"We are off to a great start and have seen phenomenal numbers during early access and first day that is still on. Three out of four phones sold in the country were on our platform. We saw record sales in large appliances category like TVs, washing machines and refrigerators," he said, adding that there has been 2.7X growth in number of new customers shopping on Amazon.in compared to previous year's Diwali.

Agarwal said Xiaomi, on its platform, sold more than a million devices in a day, while OnePlus has seen record bookings worth Rs 400 crore.

"More customers bought fashion products than any other, as Amazon fashion saw its biggest day ever more than doubling its growth over last year," he said.

About 20 million people are expected to shop on various e-commerce platforms during the festive sale, translating into sales of around USD 3 billion for players like Amazon and Flipkart, according to a report by research firm RedSeer.

The report states that the share of items like electronics and furniture during the sale could be higher this year due to various affordability initiatives being undertaken by the e-commerce players. Mobile phones currently account for a lion's share of sales on the two leading e-commerce platforms.