Amazon, Flipkart announce festive bonanza offers; pre-GST sales would contribute to low GMV growth?

Amazon India is all set to bring the American online shopping experience to India with its Great Indian Sale this festive season. Slated to start from 20th September – 24th September, the etailer is getting ready for yet another successful edition of its flagship event.

While Flipkart boasted about generating 4X more smartphone sales compared to its rival (Amazon?), the US-based ecommerce mammoth took a dig at Flipkart by saying that their rival can’t match its product selection.

Manish Tiwary, VP, category management at Amazon India affirmed,

“We have 160 million products, while the next largest competitor has maybe one-fifth of these.”

Amazon to offer product search experience

The battle of smartphones is very much on, but Amazon is not going to forget other fastest selling categories like clothing & fashion accessories. The marketplace has over 2 million products and 200 brands in its fashion vertical. This year Amazon Fashion would offer product search experience like a 360 degree view of the clothes to Indian buyers, similar to American buyers.

Besides using AI to enhance shopping experience, Amazon is also adding products to its private labels in the fashion category.

Arun Sirdeshmukh, head of Amazon Fashion India disclosed,

“Our fashion studio Blink will help us create interactive product shots. It is part of our strategy to reinforce the fact that we have a leadership position in India… We are adding footwear to the Symbol label this Diwali.”

To meet the festive demands, Amazon also expanded its delivery network.

On the other hand, Flipkart has lined up various financing schemes for buyers and attractive discounts on top selling product categories in order to woo buyers. The Bansals-led company is banking on exclusive brand tie-ups and private labels to score a big win in the online fashion category.

This year’s festive sale won’t be as big as last year’s, say experts

Ecommerce biggies are leaving no stone unturned to catch Indian shoppers’ attention. But industry experts are of an opinion that the GMV growth would be low compared to the previous year. To be precise, 10% low. Reason? The many pre-GST sales hosted by etailers.

According to an industry expert,

“Fatigue factor has seeped into the market, thanks to the pre-GST sale, which saw e-tailers offloading their entire stock at a discounted rate. Hence, consumers residing in Tier 2 and 3 cities may refrain from buying during the festive season sale, even as customers in metro and top 10 cities are expected to spend.”

The industry watchers do have point when they say that fatigue has set in as people shopped a lot during the pre-GST period. But speculations ahead of the festive sales and predicting that it won’t be as successful as the previous years have become a norm.

The deals & discounts have taken their position, ads are running on TV & newspapers, warehouse capacity have been increased, additional workforce has been hired and new products have been stocked. Let’s wait for the festive sales to begin to see if the industry experts are right about the slow GMV growth.