Festival sales: Meesho beats Amazon in order volumes

SoftBank-backed social commerce platform Meesho outperformed e-commerce giant Amazon in terms of order volumes during the early leg of the ongoing festival shopping season, according to a new report by consultancy firm Redseer.

Walmart-owned Flipkart led the order share with 49 per cent, while Meesho earned a 21 per cent share to climb to the second spot. Meesho’s performance during the festival season – the busiest time for e-commerce businesses in India – is remarkable as it is a relatively new entrant in the space.

Redseer tied Meesho's success to its low average order value and high penetration in tier-2 cities. “It’s interesting to see a new platform emerge strongly,” said Ujjwal Chaudhry, a partner at the consultancy firm.

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The company agreed

"Over 80 per cent of orders during the festive sales came from tier 2+ markets, it is a testament to our efforts to reach underserved users with different needs around selection and affordability," Utkrishta Kumar, CXO, Business at Meesho, said in an email to DH.

Larger rival Amazon looked at it differently

“We cannot comment on speculative reports without robust and transparent methodology especially as these have not been shared with us," an Amazon spokesperson said, adding that it was “delighted by the wonderful customer response to the Amazon Great Indian Festival 2022, with our first 12 days receiving the highest-ever orders”.

In terms of gross sales or gross merchandise value (GMV), the Flipkart Group (comprising Flipkart, Myntra and Shopsy) retained the top spot with a 62 per cent market share. Amazon came in second with a 26 per cent share of the pie.

Overall, about Rs 40,000 crore worth of goods have been sold online during the first week of the festival sales period that started on 22 September, clocking a year-on-year growth of about 27 per cent, according to Redseer.

Smartphones remained the most desired product category, contributing 41 per cent to the GMV with 56,000 phones sold every hour. Fashion – which includes apparel, footwear and accessories – registered the highest growth with a 47 per cent jump from the year-ago period. There was a 24 per cent rise in the number of online shoppers from the same period last year, with 65 per cent of the 70 - 80 million figure coming from tier 2+ cities.