From music parties to war rooms to AI: Inside e-tail festival battles

E-commerce retailers are expected to garner sales worth Rs 90,000 crore this festive season, 18-20 per cent higher than last year, according to the analysts

On Saturday night, hundreds of people grooved to the songs and music of singer  Kailash Kher and his Indian fusion band Kailasa, which had come to perform at a venue near the World Trade Center (WTC) in the northwest neighbourhood of Bengaluru. But inside the WTC, which houses the headquarters of Amazon India, Manish Tiwary, vice president and country manager, India consumer business, Amazon, is holed up in the war room and anxiously looking at the large display screens. He is analysing the traffic that the e-commerce firm is witnessing for its flagship festive sale, the Great Indian Festival (GIF)