E-commerce firms clock Rs 22,000 crore worth sales in 5 days

E-commerce companies have witnessed a strong start for their festive season sales this year by recording business worth Rs 22,000 crore ($3.1 billion) during the first five days.

The e-tailers have recorded 77% of the total sales estimated by RedSeer Consulting for the first phase of the festive season sale. The early access to online sales for Flipkart started on October 15 and on October 16 for Amazon Prime customers.

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RedSeer had projected $4 billion (around Rs 29,000 crore) worth of sales during the festive days, a growth of 50% over the same period last year. "Sharper sales growth compared to last year especially in the first three days mean that the industry is on track to reach or even surpass our forecasts of $4 billion," RedSeer Consulting said in a report on Wednesday.

The first few days of this year’s online sale season saw a more explosive start compared to last year. Key themes driving this year’s sale are affordability, smartphones and Tier-2 growth resulting in more recovery for brands and sellers, the report said.

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Flipkart's The Big Billion Days (TBBD) sale will end on October 21, while Myntra's 'Big Fashion Festival' is being held between October 16-22. Snapdeal's first phase of festive sale ended on October 20. Amazon's 'Great Indian Festival' started on October 17 and ends on October 23.

During the first five days, Flipkart delivered 10 million shipments with over 3.5 million shipments delivered by its Kirana partners compared to 1 million deliveries during the last year's sale, between October 16 and 21. The deliveries include mobiles, fashion, electronics, and home furnishing products. This year, TBBD witnessed more than 55% increase in digital payments transactions on Flipkart with a sharp increase in the new to digital customer base, the Walmart-backed company said.

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Mobiles continued to do well driven by upgrade programmes and new launches supported by value offers. Also, Tier-2 cities were the new growth drivers driven by reverse migration, digital adoption and value offers post-Covid-19 pandemic, the RedSeer report said.

This year Flipkart’s TBBD saw 1.5x number of transacting sellers compared to last year, amongst whom more than 35% witnessed 3x more sales vis-a-vis TBBD 2019. The number of Crorepati sellers went up 1.5x and the number of Lakhpati sellers saw a 1.7x jump. Flipkart marketplace has in fact seen 40,000 Lakhpati sellers post COVID-19.

This Big Billion Days further brought forth small businesses from smaller towns. Within the 35%+ new seller base this year, around 60% of the sellers were from Tier-II and Tier-III towns, Flipkart said.