Flipkart sees multi-fold jump in customer purchases using credit facilities

E-commerce company Flipkart on Saturday said it saw a multi-fold jump in customers' purchases using credit facilities during the first two days of its annual festive season sale 'The Big Billion Days'.

The Walmart group firm recorded 27 times jump in the third-party easy monthly instalment (EMI) usage during The Big Billion Days' compared to usual business days.

"With 5 per cent cashback on every purchase using the Flipkart Axis Bank credit card, the co-branded card witnessed a spike of 20 times in overall spends and eight-fold transactions when compared to the non-sale days. Flipkart Pay Later EMI witnessed a 8.5 times spike in the daily transactions run rate compared to the pre-TBBD period," the company said.

Flipkart said that it has recorded over 330 mn user visits, implying repeat visits of individuals several times on the platform, during the first two days of The Big Billion Days (TBBD), which started on September 26 for select users and on next day for everyone.

The company has counted both September 26 and 27 as Day 1 of its festive sale. It did not share the number of unique visitors on its platform.

In the early trends, Flipkart observed growing demand across mobiles, food and nutrition and grooming categories as well as increase in demand from tier 2 and beyond cities.

Flipkart Group's hospitality platform Cleartrip registered a 2.5 times increase in overall users compared to the pre-festive season. The company claimed that flight and hotel bookings registered a rise of 3 times and 4 times, respectively with popular destinations being Goa, Amritsar, Nainital, Varanasi and Mussoorie.

"Shopsy, Flipkart's hypervalue platform, experienced a 70 per cent increase in customer visits and a 2.8 times increase in transactions compared to the pre-festive season," the company said.

The e-commerce firm claimed that Flipkart Wholesale witnessed two times growth during early access of Big Billion Days, led by three times growth across FMCG categories.

Along with increase in demand from top metro cities such as New Delhi, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Flipkart claims to have observed demand from customers from regions such as Medinipur, Hisar, Berhampore, Bankura and Agartala, among others.