Leading e-retailer Flipkart on Monday announced a 'big billion sale' offer from October 13 to 17, a year after a similar sale enraged buyers for 'cheating' on discounts and its portal crashed.
"As an app-only shopping event, our 'big billion days' have exciting offers and discounts across 70 product categories for customers," Flipkart said in a statement here.
Unlike last year when the sale was for a day (October 6) through its portal, which the company claimed had a billion hits, the special sale next month is spread over five days to celebrate the ensuing festive season.
"The sale will be special to shop for gifts and other items. Customers can shop for apparels, footwear, mobiles, furniture, laptops, toys, large appliances, jewellery, watches or home furnishing items," Flipkart's commerce platform head Mukesh Bansal said in the statement.
Fashion portal Myntra, in which Flipkart bought majority stake for an estimated Rs.2,000 cr in May 2014, will also be a part of the special sale with a selection from iconic brands at special offers.
"India shops the most during this time of the year. With 75 percent of traffic coming via mobile, we expect this 'app only' sale to be the biggest shopping event of the year," Bansal, who is also Myntra's chairman, noted.
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To avoid a repeat of the last year's chaotic sale, resulting in its co-founders apologising and admitting to inadequate preparedness, the company has worked to ensure a seamless shopping experience for its 50-million customers.
"We have opened new fulfilment centres across the country to guarantee efficient delivery. We have also ramped our technology and supply chain support to meet the huge customer demand," Bansal added.
The eight-year-old company claims to offer about 30 million products across 70 categories, including books, media, consumer electronics and lifestyle.
With 50-million registered users and 33,000 employees, the portal gets about 10 million hits daily and delivers eight million shipments per month.