BBD sale rings in carnival atmosphere at Flipkart

It was midnight of October 10 in Flipkart office at Embassy Tech Park on Outer Ring Road in the heart of India’s tech capital and more than 1,000 employees were in a carnival mood.

Flipkart office was lit up with colourful lights and loud music was playing as employees were hooked on to their laptops and desktops, with piping hot coffee in one hand, to service a flurry of orders placed on the company’s marketplace as the Big Billion Day (BBD) 2018 sale unfolded.

The employees were busy attending the requirements of the BBD, including from the customers, sellers, delivery personnel and data centre employees.

Members of senior management and junior staff of the company were bubbling with enthusiasm as they were aiming to achieve the maximum benefit on the penultimate day of their 10-month-long preparation for the mega sales event.

Talking to DH, Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said the fifth year of the annual sales event marks the company's yet another effort to transform the buying habits of Indians.

"We want to give our customers super-rich buying experience by providing products at affordable price. BBD 2018 will help us add next million online buyers from Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities into our platform," he said.

To enable its employees “feel at home” experience, Flipkart arranged special workspace on the ground floor of the office for each vertical groups, with bed and pillow, food at reachable place and special meeting rooms.

Flipkart employees congratulated each other for their exemplary work to make the BBD a grand success. "It is a great day for Flipkart employees as they want to deliver their best so that the company can add more to its gross sales during the BBD sales," said an employee of Flipkart.

Flipkart office was adorned with large display screens on which numbers pertaining to online orders were flashing every passing second. There was a jubilation across the office, when the clock turned 12 am and the screen displayed peak order number above 3,56,000.

All the employees burst into a big celebration and congratulated each other with rantings “we have achieved”. They hugged each other and shook hands, while some even blew whistle to express their happiness.

Teams were split into different categories such as smartphones, large appliances, home furnishings and fashion, among others. There were teams for logistics, marketing and technology.

Krishnamurthy said as part of the BBD sales, Flipkart app underwent phenomenal change. "We have made it more colourful with pictures and additional videos. But at the same time, retained its size so that customers will not face problems in flipping the app pages," he said.

Flipkart Furniture Category head Nandita Sinha was extremely excited as the category made its debut at the BBD sales festival this year. The category was created after the last year’s annual sales festival.

"We have a wide bouquet of offerings with our quality certification. Besides our internal brand Perfect Home, we provide an assortment of 600 products across 22 product categories," she said.

Flipkart is offering international and Indian brands such as Lazy Boy, Spacewood and Royal Oak. All the products underwent the six quality checks and all sellers are required to go through rigorous quality checks consisting of 20 steps, she added.

To add festive flavour to the celebration, the company put up stalls to make sugar candy, food and beverages were arranged for the employees with special transport arrangements.

The fifth edition of the BBD is happening after US retail giant Walmart took 77% controlling stake in Flipkart earlier this year for a consideration of $16 billion.