Amazon to host month-long Great Indian Festival starting October 17

This will be Amazon India's biggest event ever as it will last at least a month and allow hundreds of thousands of small and medium businesses to offer unique selection to customers

E-commerce giant Amazon India on Tuesday revealed the timeline of its flagship sale event of the year  ‘Great Indian Festival’ (GIF) which will commence from October 17. This is going to the biggest event for Amazon India till date as it will go on for at least a month. The event would allow hundreds of thousands of small and medium businesses (SMBs) to offer unique selection to customers. Amazon said the event would help the enterprises rebuild and accelerate their business in these tough times.  

“This year’s Great Indian Festival is an opportunity for our sellers and partners to reach millions of customers across the country. Our sellers are excited and expect this to help them in accelerating their business,” said Manish Tiwary, vice president, Amazon India. “For our customers, our aim is to help them find everything they need during the festive season and deliver it safely to them.”

Customers across the country will also have the opportunity to shop for unique products from thousands of Amazon sellers under various programmes. These include Local Shops, Amazon Launchpad, Amazon Saheli, and Amazon Karigar. The customers would get access to deals and offers extended by hundreds of thousands of small businesses. Prime members will get early access to the event starting October 16, 2020.

 

As per a recent survey by research firm  Nielsen, more than 85 per cent of SMBs sellers on Amazon.in are expecting to reach out to new customers and see an increase in sales.  More than 74 per cent sellers are optimistic about the recovery of business and 78 per cent are positive about an increase in visibility of products.

Amazon’s rival Walmart-owned Flipkart is also hosting its flagship sale event of the year, 'The Big Billion Days' (BBD), a six-day event which will commence from October 16. 

In order to ensure safe and reliable deliveries during GIF, Amazon has ramped up its delivery infrastructure adding close to 200 delivery stations. It has also added tens of thousands of delivery partners to its network. Amazon.in has expanded its fulfilment footprint with more than 60 fulfilment centres in 15 states offering a storage capacity of over 32 million cubic feet to serve customers in the farthest parts of the country. Amazon India has also announced 5 new sort centres and expansion of 8 existing sort centres across the country to strengthen fulfilment capacity.

Amazon said customers can support businesses by shopping from hundreds of SMB deals and get rewards which they can redeem during the sale. For instance, customers can shop for Sambalpuri sarees from Odisha, robotic vacuum cleaners from ILIFE and haircare products from Arata Beauty. The other such products include exercise bikes and dumbbells from Kilkfit, memory foam mattresses from Insleep and Jewelry from Swara Creations.

There would be over 900 new product launches from top brands such as Samsung, OnePlus and Apple. The other such brands include Boat, Sennheiser, LG and Titan.

Customers can experience new deals from sellers being announced every day from the large brands across categories. These include stay-at-home products like laptops, smartphones, furniture and headphones. There would also be deals on large appliances such as air purifiers, TVs, washing machines and dishwashers.

With the wedding season coming up, Amazon said its wedding store offers a wide range of products. The Dhanteras store will offer deals on gold coins, utensils and Diwali home décor.

 

Users can now use voice to quickly narrow their search for products, top deals. These include Alexa-exclusive deals, or just ask Alexa on the Amazon Shopping app (Android only). The other applications include paying utility bills, load money in Amazon Pay, or navigate to the small business store or the Great Indian Bazaar.

Amazon said business buyers can also save a lot on Amazon Business with bulk discounts. There would be lower festive price offers and cashback, on commercial products for categories like laptops, printers and networking devices from top brands such as HP, Lenovo, Canon, Godrej, Casio and  Eureka Forbes. The other such products include disinfecting devices, office electronics and vacuum cleaners. Businesses can also buy from the SMB store to fulfil their gifting requirement for clients, customers and employees. 

Amazon said customers can get a wide range of affordable finance options. This includes a 10 per cent instant bank discount on HDFC Bank debit and credit cards and EMI transactions. They can avail no-cost EMI on debit and credit cards.

Great Indian Festival highlights

. Over 650,000 sellers offer millions of products to customers on Amazon.in.

. 40 million products from small businesses and products from over 20,000 local shops across 100 cities.

. 100,000 local shops and Kiranas have been enabled by Amazon to serve customers.

. Over 900 new product launches from top brands like Samsung, OnePlus and Apple.

. Customers can shop in one of the six languages- English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada.

. There are topical stores leading up to Diwali with special selection for Navratri, Durga Puja, Wedding season and Dhanteras.