E-commerce majors Flipkart and Amazon are set for a game of one-upmanship again in a festival sale face-off on Wednesday.
Almost immediately after Amazon announced ‘Wave 2’ of its Great Indian Festival, Flipkart announced its next Festive Dhamaka Days Sale.
The Walmart-owned company on Wednesday opened its sale that will last till Saturday. Amazon’s second festival blitz also openedon Wednesday but will go on till Sunday.
Chequered history
In its 5-years of existence, the festival sale days in India have played a crucial role in helping take Indian retail online. When the concept of festive sales was first tried out by Flipkart in 2014, it turned out to be a bitter-sweet event.
According to research firm RedSeer Consulting, though the first event turned out to be a huge day of sales for the industry, issues of late orders and system failures were among the many challenges that newcomer Flipkart had to face. Undeterred, all the e-tailers used the learnings from the 2014 event to make each of the next few festive days bigger than ever (with 50 per cent CAGR ion event scale). Apart from a smooth run after the initial hiccup, the event hads become a landmark milestone, said ys a RedSeer report, for beyond the sales itself, it has helped to catalyse the growth of the industry.
Powering growth
Festival sales have powered the growth of e-tailers by helping firms acquire new customers, with their attractive deals and exclusive launches, says a RedSeer Consulting report. Also before the sale, there is heavy investments in infrastructure like warehousing and mass seller recruitments. Driven by festive days, annual online shoppers (shopping at least once a year) is projected to exceed 100 million at the end of this year, according to the RedSeer report.
Festive rush
A study by SEMrush, a digital marketing company, shows ‘Diwali Gifts’, ‘Diwali Crackers’, and ‘Diwali Sale’ have already become keywords with the largest search volume, registering 12,100 searches, 9,900 searches, and 3,600 searches, respectively, in September.
Rohan Ayyar, Regional Marketing Manager India, SEMrush, said that with an estimated 500 million internet users in India, and 77.8 per cent of all internet browsing taking place through mobile devices, “spirits are high during the Diwali season and celebrations lead to a great spike in shopping trends.”