Festive sales: Ecommerce platforms clock $3.5 bn in first 4 days

Online retailers have clocked $3.5 billion in the first four days of festive sales, contributing to 60% of the projected gross merchandise value (GMV), according to Redseer Strategy Consultants.

The first four days of the previous year contributed to 59%, signalling a better-than-anticipated kick-off to the festive season this year.

These numbers include Flipkart's 'Big Billion Day Sale', Amazon's 'Great Indian Festival', Meesho's 'Mega Blockbuster Sale', and sales on platforms like Myntra, Ajio, and Nykaa among others.

The report further states that the first four days of the festive period saw the overall daily average GMV rise to 5.4 times compared to business as usual days for overall online retail.

First four days of festive sale this year is around 1.3 times the first four days in previous year festive sales, the report says.

Redseer had earlier projected a GMV of $5.9 billion for this year's festive sale. "As expected, we are on track to achieve this figure. 60% of our forecast is already achieved in the first 4 days of sale," says Sanjay Kothari, associate partner, Redseer Strategy Consultants.

E-commerce marketplaces usually hold up to three sales leading to the festival of Diwali. The first of these sales is usually the largest and usually accounts for more than 50% of the sales during the festive period.

Mobiles continue to do well, driven by upgrade programmes and new launches supported by value offers. In the first four days, an estimated ₹11,000 crore of mobiles were sold by the large e-commerce players.

In terms of units, 60-70 lakh mobiles were sold in the first four days. "We are expecting a total sale of around 90 lakhs - 1 crore units of mobiles for festive week 1. We are also seeing premium phones driving mobile growth this year," says Kothari.

Fashion too is also fuelling the festive growth. According to Redseer analysis, an estimated ₹5,500 crore worth of fashion items were sold in the first four days. Fashion saw a 4.5 times jump in terms of daily average GMV from business as usual days.

Around 50-55 million shoppers made purchases during the first four days, the report says.

Despite the intense conversations about e-commerce, it is in its infancy, about 2%-4% of the overall organised retail market, Manish Tiwary, country manager (India Consumer Business), Amazon India, told Fortune India last week.

"We are always encouraged at Amazon to be customer focused and never competitor focused. We do observe competition, but our strategy is consumer-focused. The penetration of ecommerce grocery is not even 1%, even fashion is under 1%. We have a customer base and a seller base, but we still have a long way to go," he said.

If global marketplaces are not allowed to own brands, how can Amazon have brands such as Amazon Basics, Solimo, Presto or Amazfit? "Because of FDI rules we are not supposed to have our own brands, they are either licensed or we are developing them together and are sold by a third-party seller," Tiwary said.