Lakh of sellers including from Tier II and beyond on Walmart-owned Flipkart and Amazon India have received orders during the initial days of festive sale on their platforms. Amazon India’s 1.1 lakh sellers received orders during the first 48 hours of its 'Great Indian Festival' sale, with a bulk of these sellers being from smaller parts of the country. On the other hand, three lakh sellers on Flipkart received orders during the first three days of its 'The Big Billion Days' (TBBD) sale. Of these, about 60 per cent sellers were from Tier II cities and beyond.
Amazon's 'Great Indian Festival' started on October 17 and will go on for about a month to coincide with the festive season. Amazon Prime members were provided early access to the sale from October 16. Flipkart's annual TBBD sale began on October 16 and will end on October 21. About 66 per cent of new Prime sign-ups were also from small towns like Tawang and Changlang (Arunachal Pradesh), Mokokchung (Nagaland), Baran (Rajasthan), Pudukkottai (Tamil Nadu), Una (Himachal Pradesh) and Jaunpur (Uttar Pradesh).
About 1.4 million people had shopped from small and medium businesses (SMBs) on its platform in the 10-day run up to the 'Great Indian Festival'. Most of Amazon India's brand partners -- right from wireless manufacturers like Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi and OnePlus to electronics players like Asus, Lenovo, HP and appliances makers like LG, Whirlpool-- had their biggest ever 48 hours on Amazon.
Also, over 1 lakh customers bought Amazon devices, Echo and Fire TV. The new language launches (Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada) just before Diwali seem to have a high engagement. Early signs show very good engagement on that front.
Flipkart platform witnessed a 1.5X higher spend per customer across EMIs and 'Flipkart Pay Later' transactions. While cities such as Bengaluru, New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Kolkata continue to lead the pack, tier III cities and beyond made up for almost 60 per cent of the demand this year, it added.
Customers from new cities including Jhumri Telaiya (Jharkhand), Chamba (Himachal Pradesh), Cumbum (Andhra Pradesh), Thottiyam (Tamil Nadu) have shopped during The Big Billion Days sale.