Big festive sale: Flipkart, Amazon get ready for battle

The festival season may still be a few weeks away but two of the country’s largest online retailers, Flipkart and Amazon, are leaving no stone unturned to woo customers ahead of  festival sales. And with good reason.

Sales of online retailers are expected to nearly double to a whopping $2.5 billion to $3 billion during the five-day festive season this year from $1.5 billion last year, according to a report by Redseer Consulting, an Internet-focussed consulting firm. The number of shoppers is also expected to leap to 20 million from last year’s 13-14 million with the focus on attracting buyers from tier II cities.

“We expect the large AOV (average order value) items like electronics and furniture share to increase this festive season due to “affordability” initiatives,” the firm said in the report.

Over the last three years, sales -- or gross merchandise volumes -- during the festive season have nearly quadrupled. They stood at $0.7 billion in 2015 and rose to $1.05 billion the following year.

With numbers like that, online retail giants are gearing up for battle. The biggest home player, Flipkart -- which has the world’s largest retailer Walmart on its side this year -- recently launched an independent platform “2GUD” to cater to the refurbished goods market for mobiles, laptops, and electronic accessories.

Flipkart is offering EMIs on debit cards and this is expected to be a popular payment method as the number of debit cards in India, at nearly 944 million, outstripped the estimated 39 million credit cards in 2017. Flipkart also launched its private label, ‘Perfect Homes', this year which is expected to contribute 30-40% of the category’s revenue by the end of 2018.

Amazon India, on its part, has launched a Hindi interface for its website and mobile apps in order to grab a larger slice from tier I and tier II cities. It is also working on building a robust supply chain to cater to the increase in demand and is creating an extensive supply chain network in India for faster deliveries across tier I and tier II cities. It has expanded to a total of 67 fulfilment centres across 13 states in India.