Ecommerce firms clock 65% jump in festive season sales at $8.3 billion

Flipkart emerged as the leader during the whole festive month with 66% share of the total sale

Ecommerce firms have clocked 65% year-on-year growth in festive sales at $8.3 billion (over Rs 61,000 crore) during the mid-October to November period which included Dasara and Diwali festivals.

According to homegrown consulting firm Redseer's new report on India’s online festive sale for a month, the growth was driven by Tier-2+ cities during the online sales season this year.

Commenting on the latest report, Mrigank Gutgutia, Director at Consulting firm RedSeer, said, "The overall growth story has been very bullish this festive season. We had forecasted $7 billion of sales but the actual figures surpassed our expectations fairly comfortably, showing how comfortable consumers have become with shopping online even in this pandemic hit year."

The festive season for this year saw 88% customer growth from last year which was driven by about 40 million shoppers from Tier 2+ cities. Further, mobiles continued to dominate across all the products and with further increasing share of users from Tier 2+ cities, GMV per customer dropped to Rs 6,600 from Rs 7,450 in last festive season.

Additionally, the Gross merchandise value (GMV) numbers increased from $5 billion last year up to $8.3 billion this year.

Factors like high pre-sale awareness and anticipation driven by an impactful campaign, wide selection across the categories, seamless supply chain planning enabled minimal product stock-outs along with multiple affordability constructs helped Flipkart and Amazon to drive growth this festive season. According to RedSeer estimates, Flipkart Group emerged as the leader during the whole festive month with 66% share of the total sale.

"One clear lesson from this festive season is that ecommerce has become more mainstream than ever. And it has proven that with the right assortment at the right prices which is delivered quickly in the safety of customer's homes, the value proposition of ecommerce is very powerful. Thus it is imperative for brands and sellers to shift their focus to online quickly and enable a seamless online experience for the customer in order to thrive in a post-Covid-19 world," said Gutgutia.