The world’s leading eCommerce giant Amazon has drawn more unique visitors to its websites from India than its Indian competitor Flipkart in October.
According to data accessed by Deccan Herald from comScore MMX, Amazon.in has received 30,113,000 unique visitors compared with Flipkart.com’s 26,908,000 visitors in October 2015. Amazon had last overtaken Flipkart in May 2015 with 23,628,000 unique visitors. During that month the comparable number for Flipkart was 23,503,000.
Flipkart ran its Big Billion Days (October 13 to 17) and Amazon India ran its The Great Indian Festive Sale (October 13 to 17) and The Great Indian Diwali Sale (October 26 to October 28) in October this year. No wonder, Amazon registered a growth of 37.84 per cent in October compared with its September 2015 unique visitors of 21,846,000. For Flipkart, growth in October was a more sedate 21.67 per cent from 22,115,000 unique visitors in September.
According to comScore MMX data, the number of unique visitors on both Amazon.in and Flipkart.com fluctuated throughout the year. But except October and May, Flipkart had more unique visitors in all months this year, the comScore MMX data showed.
When it comes to family of websites, Amazon websites emerged as the fifth largest visited from India this October with 32,111,000 visitors.
Flipkart sites followed in the sixth position with 27,194,000 uniques. Google sites occupied the number one position with 74,294,000 unique visitors in October. As per the Alexa ranking for top Indian websites, currently the Indian version of the popular search engine (Google.in) is the top ranking website in the country. Even here Amazon.in (No.5) leads Flipkart.com (No.7).
More inventories helped
According to Deloitte Director Rohit Bhatiani, eCommerce companies have succeeded in roping in more customers as they included more inventories to their list and thus give more people access to a variety of products. “Besides increasing their geographical spread, these companies attracted new consumers with new technological backing which helped in accessing their platforms seamlessly and reduced their shipment timing drastically in metro cities,” said Bhatiani.
He also pointed out that an increase of 0.2 per cent in the customer base will lead to a five per cent jump in the Gross Merchandise Value (GMV).
An analyst working with a leading research firm said these eCommerce players have invested in promotional activities which gave full thrust to their customer-centricity, even tracking their behaviour.
“Amazon is really bullish about the strategically untapped Indian market which they feel can be conquered with better customer experience, increasing more product diversity, and going for-long term investments. Flipkart, which has raised $2.6 billion over the past 18 months, is more worried about their widening debt and looking at a profitable advertisement-driven business model,” Bhatiani said.
Nasdaq-listed internet analytics company comScore had revenues of $329 m last year. Alexa is a subsidiary of Amazon.
Amazon marches ahead
Media Total Unique Visitors(000)
1 Google Sites 74,294
2 Facebook 49,053
3 Microsoft Sites 35,776
4 Yahoo Sites 32,587
5 Amazon Sites 32,111
6 Flipkart sites 27,194
7 BitTorrent Network 26,795
8 Times Internet Limited 21,078
9 JABONG.COM 21,037
10 Wikimedia Foundation Sites 18,140