E-commerce firms clock $2.7 bn in sales in first four days of festive sale

E-commerce players such as Amazon, Flipkart, and others have clocked about $2.7 billion in sales in the first four days of festive sale. According to the latest report released by RedSeer Consulting ‘Mid-Festive Check In’, the first week (2nd-5th October) of festive sale of 2021, e-commerce platforms including social commerce and grocery, altogether the platforms garnered about $2.7 billion in sales and are on track to achieve $4.8 billion gross merchandise value (GMV) which was forecasted by RedSeer Consulting last month.

According to industry sources, this would surpass the pre-pandemic sales of $2.7 billion witnessed during the first week of festive sales in 2019.

However, the RedSeer report said that the first four days of the Festive week in CY20 accounted for 63 per cent of the overall festive week sales – as compared to this year where it accounts for about 57 per cent of the projected sales. Smartphones contributed about 50 per cent of GMV during the first four days of sales.

“With the festive sales lasting longer than last year (9 days compared to 7 days) – we are observing the customer demand being more spread out across the period than being concentrated in the first half of the festive week,” said Ujjwal Chaudhry, associate partner at RedSeer. “To that tune, we have observed sales of $2.7 billion across e-commerce platforms and we expect another further $2.1 billion over the next 5 days.”

RedSeer had earlier said that the platforms will clock over $9 billion gross merchandise value (GMV) during the festive season which is a growth of 23 per cent. The report estimates that over 75 per cent customers are planning to buy equivalent to or more than last year across categories like mobiles, large appliances, beauty and fashion.

It said that seller sentiments are equally optimistic this year. Many sellers are planning to offer about 10-30 per cent discounts on platforms, with the goal of releasing higher volume sales. Sellers on both e-commerce and social commerce platforms have a favourable perspective of forecasted volume sales and growth during the upcoming festive season.

E-commerce firms Amazon and Flipkart recently said the early trends of their festive sales event reflected increased participation from tier 2 and 3 cities. Amazon’s month-long Great Indian Festival 2021 and Flipkart’s The Big Billion Days began on Sunday.

During Amazon’s Prime Early Access on October 2, the number of local shops participating in the event more than doubled compared to last year. “We also saw a 60 per cent increase in sellers who received their highest-ever single day sales year-on-year on Amazon,” said Manish Tiwary, vice-president, Amazon India, on Sunday.

For Amazon, Prime subscription continues to be a customer favourite across India, with two of three new sign-ups coming from tier 2 and 3 cities and customers shopping in 8 Indian languages. The number of sellers receiving an order from tier-2 and tier-3 cities jumped by 21 per cent and 16 per cent more sellers received orders over last year.

Early Access for Flipkart Plus customers grew 40 per cent compared to last year. About 45 per cent of the customer demand has been from tier-3 cities and beyond, signalling a strong preference for high-value goods and items. The anticipation for this festival was evident as more than 2 million customers pre-booked close to 5 million products just prior to Early Access by paying just Rs 1.

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