Amazon’s ‘Great Indian Festive Sale’ to kick-off from October 13

The festival of Diwali is just around the corner and leading ecommerce players are ready with their deals and offers to woo customers. After Flipkart announced dates of its ‘Big Billion Sale’ event, India arm of American retail giant Amazon has announced its ‘Great Indian Festive Sale’ from October 13 to 17, 2015. The five-day sale by Amazon.in is offering exclusive discounts on all their categories.

This comes just days after, Flipkart announced its app-only Big Billion Days sale. Amazon.in has also announced a gift of one kilogram gold on each of the sale days to one winner. There would be one winner every day through the five days of the event. The winner will be chosen by a random draw of lots to answer a qualifying contest question which will enable the participant to win a chance to receive the prize. It will also run exclusive app-only deals on October 16 and 17, 2015 to take on Flipkart.

Meanwhile, traders body CAIT has once again alleged that ecommerce firms such as Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal are violating FDI norms by holding forthcoming festive season sales and it has complained to the Ministry of Commerce. “These companies solicit general public into their respective sales by big advertisement campaign on print, electronic and social media... the advertisements addressed to the public in general tantamount to retail trading,” Confederation of All India Traders said in a statement .

CAIT has demanded that not only these companies be restricted to conduct such sales but necessary action should be taken against them for violation of FDI policy. The industry body has also sent a copy of their complaint to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman calling for their immediate intervention.