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To cash in on the festival season, E-commerce giants Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart will be locking their horns yet again.
While Flipkart will host its annual flagship sale event -- The Big Billion Days (TBBD) -- between October 8 and October 15, with early access for Plus customers from October 7, Amazon’s The Great Indian Festival (GIF) will begin on October 8, with early access to Prime members from October 7 midnight. The latter event was earlier scheduled to start on October 10; customers shall get early access to more than 25,000 products until October 6 via Kick Starter Deals.
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Meesho and Snapdeal, too, are gearing up to hold their mega sale event around the same time.
According to a Redseer report on the Indian festival season, sellers are expecting at least a 15 per cent year-on-year jump in festival sales, after a relatively subdued first three quarters of CY23. “The festival period is expected to enable sellers, especially the smaller ones, to come out of the challenging sales environment,” said Mrigank Gutgutia, partner at Redseer Strategy Consultants.
An earlier report by Redseer had stated that e-commerce retailers expect to garner sales worth Rs 90,000 crore this festival season, 18-20 per cent higher than last year.
This is the 10th year of such festival season sales by online retailers in India.
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Over these 10 years, Indian e-tailing has transformed, with the annual GMV (gross merchandise value) of the industry having grown by almost 20 times. In 2014, the industry clocked a GMV of Rs 27,000 crore, but Redseer, for this calendar year, expects the figure to be Rs 5.25 trillion.
About the upcoming GIF, Manish Tiwary, vice-president and country manager, India consumer business, Amazon, said: “Customers will get access to thousands of new launches from leading brands, and sellers across India.” With Amazon Pay Later (a buy now and pay next month plan), they can avail of instant credit up to Rs 1 lakh to shop now and pay next month.
For Flipkart, the 10th edition of TBBD is expected to bring millions of customers, sellers, MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises), and kirana delivery partners across India under one platform. Kalyan Krishnamurthy, chief executive officer, Flipkart Group, said during the festival season, the platform will generate over 100,000 new job opportunities across its supply chain. These seasonal jobs include local kirana delivery partners.
This year, Flipkart said, it has scaled its supply chain with last-mile distribution hubs and large-scale fulfilment centres, strengthening its reach in tier-III cities and beyond. It has added more than 1.9 million square feet of space across Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Bihar, Punjab, Rajasthan, and Telangana. The e-commerce firm is also planning to deliver more than 40 per cent of shipments during the festival event through its kirana delivery programme.
“Over 1.4 million entrepreneurs, including Flipkart Samarth sellers, encompassing artisans, weavers, women, and self-help groups (SHGs), are set to participate in the TBBD,” Krishnamurthy said. Flipkart noted there is 27 per cent year-on-year growth in the number of sellers.
SoftBank-backed Meesho, too, will hold its ‘Meesho Mega Blockbuster Sale’ from October 6. Meesho said this time it has over 1.4 million sellers and 120 million product listings across 30 categories. In the past two months, Meesho has onboarded nearly 200,000 new sellers in preparation for the festival season. Sellers registered on Meesho are projected to hire over 300,000 seasonal workers.
Snapdeal, a leading value e-commerce platform, will launch its first sale during the festival season -- Toofani Sale - Festive Dhamaka – between October 8 and October 15. During this period, Snapdeal said shoppers can expect to get discounts up to 90 per cent on an extensive range of products across categories.
