E-commerce giants fetch great sales this festive season

Flipkart and Amazon Sales Hit Home Runs!

Online retailers Flipkart and Amazon India made whopping sales with a considerable margin, in comparison to last year’s festive sale. The demand has been strongly driven by smart phones and television sales.

As per a statement by Flipkart on Sunday, its sales have doubled to at least seventy per cent of total e-commerce sales in India. This was during the five-day Big Billion Days sale that ended on Sunday. The e-commerce giant had beaten Amazon by a wide margin.

Smart phones and larger appliances had accounted for this increase in sales. Earlier in the week, Flipkart claimed that it sold at least 1.3 million smart phones during the first 20 hours of the sale launch for the category.

Last week, Flipkart had claimed that it was on track to double sales from last year’s Big Billion Days sale. This would indicate gross sales of at least Rs. 6,000 crores.

“This Diwali for us at Amazon.in was the biggest shopping event ever—the largest in terms of units, sale value, sellers, number of customers, number of pin codes we served, etc.,” said Manish Tiwary, vice-president, category management, Amazon India.

The Prime subscription programme was a big growth driver for Amazon.

Amazon claimed that growth from smartphones was more than doubled, while sales from large appliances like Tvs and washing machine jumped by 3-7 times from last year.

“Prime membership continues to be our highest selling product—this is a trend that continues from last Diwali,” added Tiwary.

The high sales figures from the e-commerce giants boosts India’s growing online retail market which had remained stagnant for the previous year. Could this sales season be a turning point for post-GST Indian economy as well?

Flipkart claims that it has beaten rival Amazon by a thin margin. Do you think Amazon needs to develop a more prudent strategy to survive in the market?

Do let us know.

Source: Live Mint