E-tailers may have sold Rs 19,000-cr goods during festive sale: Redseer

According to the consultancy firm, Flipkart continued to lead the festive sales in GMV terms, with 60-62% standalone gross GMV share during the sale event

E-tailers achieved a record $3 billion (Rs 19,000 crore) gross merchandise value (GMV) for six days of the festive sales event conducted between September 29 and October 4, 2019. 

This surge came despite challenging macro conditions, said RedSeer, a consulting firm focused on internet businesses in India and Asia. 

The year-on-year growth during the sale event was 30 per cent, with a significant chunk coming from tier-2 cities.

The biggest theme for the festive season was ‘value shopping’ as indicated by a large portion of customers hailing from smaller cities and towns who shopped online, owing to wide selection supported by affordability initiatives.

“The first wave of the festive sale event has seen record GMV of almost $3 billion despite challenging macro environment, indicating that consumer sentiment on online shopping remains bullish,” said Anil Kumar, founder, and CEO, RedSeer Consulting. “The larger push has come from Bharat customers migrating to online shopping driven by the strong value provided from the online retailers across categories including mobiles, which have shown a strong surge during sale event despite having a relatively slow-growing H1 2019,” said Kumar.

Mobile phones, like previous years, are the category leader contributing to over 55 per cent of GMV during the festive days. Consumers have saved for and delayed their mobile purchases to the festive season, again indicating the strong value shopping proposition.

Given the strong industry performance during this first sale event, the whole festive month up to end-October, is expected to generate up to $6 billion (Rs 39,000 crore) in sales, according to RedSeer.

Festive sales are largely becoming a two-player market with Flipkart and Amazon dominating over 90 per cent of the market share during the sales event. According to RedSeer, Flipkart continued to lead the festive sales in GMV terms, with 60-62 per cent standalone gross GMV share during the sale event, and about 63 per cent share if other group entities like Myntra and Jabong are also included.

Strong performance across categories including mobiles was the key reason for Flipkart leadership. This was in turn enabled by strong value prices, high EMIs adoption and diverse selection across categories, all marketed aggressively to reach customers widely. Amazon’s GMV growth was 22 per cent year-on-year, however, its volume growth rate y-o-y was more than 30 per cent, said RedSeer.

RedSeer said its research was based on feedback from consumer surveys, tech-based research and behavioural analyses and validations from broader e-tailing and logistics ecosystem.

Amazon's comment

An Amazon spokesperson on Tuesday night said the company cannot comment on “speculative reports that lack robust and credible methodology.” Citing Nielsen’s E-Analytics empaneled report of 190,000 digital users across over 50 cities, he said during the Great Indian Festival (September 28 – October 4), Amazon led with the highest share of transacting customers at 51 per cent, order share of 42 per cent and value share of 45 per cent across all marketplaces in India.

Amazon said it had received orders from 99.4 per cent pin codes and from over 65,000 sellers from more than 500 cities receiving orders in just five days. Also, customers from over 15,000 pin codes joined Prime and over 88 per cent new customers came from small towns. “This event has been our biggest celebration ever,” said Amazon.

Shopping spree

• Festive month up to end of October likely to generate up to $6 billion (Rs 39,000 crore) in sales
• Flipkart, Amazon and other e-commerce firms reported sales with gross merchandise value of $3 billion (Rs 19,000 cr), between September 29 and October
• This was 30 per cent higher than in the same event last year
• Flipkart continued to lead with 60-62 per cent standalone gross GMV share 
• Amazon’s GMV growth during the sale was 22 per cent (YoY) and volume growth a little over 30 per cent (YoY)
• Cell phones remained the category leader, contributing to 55 per cent of GMV during the sale