Festive boom perks up online sales

The e-commerce space in India is witnessing a boom and stake holders are vouching about the prospects and future this retail format in the country. A recent study by Forrester and Assocham has highlighted this. It predicted the Indian

e-commerce business will grow by 350 per cent in the ongoing festive season for a variety of products like apparels, home decor, furnishings, jewellery etc.

No wonder leading online shopping portals like Myntra, Jabong, Indiatimes, Flipkart, Snapdeal among others are extending their product portfolio to grab eye-balls. While Myntra experienced almost 15-20 per cent increase in sales this festive season, Jabong saw daily orders increase by 170-260 per cent. Shopclues has doubled its daily business for the past three weeks and experienced good festive season demand. Interestingly,eBay’s overall transactions almost doubled while margins were lower in most categories due to intense competition by other portals to attract festive shoppers. Indiatimes sales grew by 300 per cent on a monthly basis.

Unlike the common belief that people in India don’t like buying apparels online owing to the look and feel factor, the categories that showed heightened activity during festive period were gifting and apparels category. While Shopclues saw demand across the board, especially clothing, shoes, electronics, home appliances, home decor, tablets and so on, Myntra and Jabong witnessed significant jump in sales in apparels in addition to other popular gifting items like watches, perfumes, jewellery and fashion accessories. Among other categories footwear performed well on Myntra, and jewellery, home and living items saw higher than normal demand during the festive season on Jabong. Indiatimes and eBay saw consumers splurging more on personal & home gadgets. At eBay categories such as exercise & fitness products, footwear and watches doubled transactions this festive season.

Another highlight was that women customers outsmarted men with Indiatimes witnessing 70 per cent women shoppers. Most sites found maximum business coming from top 10 cities. Indiatimes urban centres accounted for 65 per cent of their shoppers while Tier II, III cities accounted for the rest. For eBay Delhi topped the rank followed by Bangalore and Mumbai. Myntra’s 50 per cent business came from the top 10 cities and the rest from Tier II, III cities. Shopclues found nearly 40 per cent of its business coming from cities with less than 1 million population whereas Jabong experienced almost equal growth in both metro and non-metros.