Diwali sales on Snapdeal, Flipkart and Amazon India are at full swing. Here’s a look at some of the sales numbers and buyers trend.
The online Diwali sales are on full swing, and some of the incoming numbers are quite impressive. The likes of Flipkart and Amazon India are leading the race followed closely by the likes of Snapdeal and Shopclues. In fact, Snapdeal says that it recorded its highest ever sales both in terms of value and volume on the day one of its Unbox Diwali Sale.
Snapdeal further says that it witnessed a 9X jump in sales on day one, shattering all its previous records. Of all the orders it received, an impressive 80 percent originated from a mobile device. Giving us a glimpse at consumer behavior, the e-commerce company says that traffic from tier II and tier III cities in India grew by nearly 20 times. These cities include the likes of Mizoram, Meghalaya, Goa, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir among others. Snapdeal also revealed that there was a lot of traffic on smartphones like the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3, Apple iPhone 6s, Apple iPhone 5s, Xiaomi Mi Max, LeEco Le Max2, and Samsung Galaxy J2. Other products that saw consumer interest include air conditioners, laptops from Dell and Acer, kitchen appliances, and cameras from Canon and Nikon.
Snapdeal recently revealed that over two million users logged in during the first hour of its Unbox Diwali sale, and in the first eight hours nearly 200 mobile phones were sold every minute. “The biggest thing we have in mind is scaling for the traffic that we get. Our objective remains to create the most friction-less experience for our buyers,” Mangla, who is Snapdeal‘s chief technology officer, told BGR India.
It’s not just Snapdeal though, and the likes of Flipkart and Amazon India too have seen a surge in traffic and sales. Amazon India for example says it has seen a traffic surge of up to six times, and in the first 12 hours of its Great Indian Festival sale, it saw 15 lakh products sold. Flipkart too saw similar surge and managed to sell over half a million products within one hour on the first day of its Big Billion Days sale. BGR India has reached out to both e-commerce sites for an updated set of sales numbers. It remains to be seen if the e-commerce sites are able to break their last year’s records. In 2015, all the three e-commerce giants together logged sales of around $500-600 million during the festival sales period, of which Flipkart alone sold goods worth $300 million.
The folks at Cashkaro.com have revealed some trends for the ongoing sales. As per numbers, Flipkart and Amazon India are leading the race followed closely by Snapdeal. The online sales are seeing participation of almost 40 percent from tier II cities, and the mobile and electronics category is the most popular with 50 percent transactions.
Despite the shopping high, there are those who are complaining about the lack of deals on all the platforms. The online shopping festival of Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal is more about discounting myth, marketing gimmick without much substantial offers, said a twitter handle. However, the authenticity of the claims on micro-blogging site could not be verified. Some consumers even posted screenshots showing that a product was priced higher on the sites they were shopping on, compared to the other sites. These complaints don’t exactly come as a surprise as recent guidelines by DIPP bar e-commerce players from doling out massive discounts.
Despite this, traders’ body CAIT says that “big sales” on e-commerce sites is a “blatant violation” of FDI policy. “Once again the online retailers have begun their agenda to flout the FDI policy right under the nose of the Government and it is sad that no action is being taken against them for violation of the FDI policy,” the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) said in a statement.
This is the second time after the release of FDI policy 2016 when such violations are openly done by online retailers and CAIT will approach Prime Minister and Finance Minister against these sales, the statement said. “As per FDI policy, it is clearly established that online retailers who have received FDI will act as marketplace only where they will provide technology platform and in no way they can influence the prices and also they are under obligation to maintain level playing field,” CAIT added.
In a response later to the queries raised, Flipkart spokesperson said, “We saw an extreme spike in traffic leading to a slight interruption in the payment gateway. But The Big Billion Days extravaganza continued, and saw customers stacking up products in their carts and making the most of other payment options such as cash on delivery.”
With inputs from agencies
Source: bgr.in
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