India’s e-com sales up 30 per cent in first phase of festive season sale

In the first phase of the festive sale, e-commerce companies in India are estimated to have registered over 30 per cent higher sales compared to last year. The first wave of the festive sale event saw a record gross merchandise value despite the challenging macroeconomic environment, indicating that consumer sentiment on online shopping remains bullish. Shopping was driven by the strong value provided from online retailers across categories. A significant share came from customers in Tier II cities and beyond. The biggest theme of the festive season was value shopping. Mobile phones, like in previous years, continued to dominate sales and accounted for over 55 per cent of the gross merchandise value. This is a term used in online retailing to indicate the gross merchandise value of the products sold through the marketplace over a certain period of time. This does not include discounts, returns, cancellations and cashbacks on products sold.

Flipkart and Amazon, which hosted their festive sale from September 29 to October 4, dominated the sale with an over 90 per cent share. While Flipkart had a 60 per cent share of the standalone gross GMV share during the sale event, Amazon’s GMV growth was 22 per cent.