Festive bonanza: E-tailers clock Rs 29,000 crore in sales in first four days

👁️ Post Views: 127,472

NEW DELHI: Consumers seem to be splurging on festive shopping with e-commerce platforms estimated to have garnered Rs 29,000 crore in sales in the first four days of the festive sale period, according to a report released by Redseer Strategy Consultants on Friday. This translates into a 16% year-on-year increase in sales over the year-ago period. Major e-tailers Flipkart and Amazon launched their annual festive sales on October 8 this year. The surge in demand was helped by several deals offered by platforms on high ASP (average selling price) items and easy financing options like no cost EMIs, analysts at the consulting firm said. Besides, features like pre-book, price-lock introduced by platforms which allowed consumers to lock in prices of high value products like electronics prior to the commencement of sale enabled e-tailers to gauge customer demand and strategise better.
The first day of the sale is estimated to have clocked seven times growth in sales over regular period while on an average, daily sales during the four-day period were six times higher than usual time, Redseer said. On Amazon, for instance, 9.5 crore customers visited the platform during the first 48 hours since the launch of the sale event. Users bet big on smartphones with 75% of the purchases made by customers from tier two, three towns and beyond, the firm said earlier this week. Initial indications from Flipkart suggested that consumers are spending on categories like mobiles, appliances, apparel and electronics among others. Saurabh Srivastava, vice-president at Amazon India had told TOI that he expects this year’s festive sale to be bigger than the previous edition. “A lot of customers look forward to the shopping festival that Amazon celebrates to do their shopping,” Srivastava had said.
Categories like fashion, beauty and personal care and home are likely to gain more traction during the remaining days of the festive sale, Redseer said. While Flipkart’s Big Billion Days is slated to end on October 15, Amazon’s Great India Festival is expected to be a month-long event. As many as 140 million shoppers are expected to make online purchases at least once during the festive period. “Premiumisation as a theme is clearly being seen in this festive season as consumer discretionary spending in high ticket categories has done well. Further, the steady growth in overall sales and high growth in ASP categories reinforces the belief in the strength of the Indian consumption story,” said Mrigank Gutgutia, partner at Redseer.
E-commerce firms typically run festive sales in phases through the Navratri to Diwali period with the first leg of the sale (launched closer to the onset of Navratri) driving the bulk of the demand. For the whole festive season, Redseer had projected e-tailers to collectively garner sales worth Rs 90,000 crore.