Big Billion Days Vs Great Indian Festival: Who won the 4-day battle?

A day later, when the widely celebrated Flipkart’s Big Billion Days and Amazon’s Great Indian Festival Sale came to an end Sunday, a new battle has emerged -- who took the largest pie.

Bengaluru-based Flipkart has claimed to have bagged 70 percent of the overall sales during the five-day sale period. The e-commerce marketplace said its sales doubled this year as compared to the last year period.

However, the company didn’t reveal the actual numbers -- total units shipped or the value of goods sold.

"During this BBD, Flipkart did sales which equals 70 percent of the entire online e-commerce market in India. We created history by growing sales by 100 per cent this BBD versus last year," said Smrithi Ravichandran, senior director at Flipkart.

According to the company, smartphone was the hottest category during the Big Billion Days. It claimed to sell 1.3 million smartphones within the first 20 hours of the category opening for sale.

Amazon also made similar claims like its rival Flipkart and insisted it remains the largest marketplace and the fastest growing one in Indian e-commerce landscape.

It boasted of winning new customers through the sales. More than 85 percent of new customers came from small towns and cities.

"We are especially excited about growing e-commerce in India with more than 85 percent of new customers from small towns." said Manish Tiwary, Vice President of Category Management, Amazon India in a press statement. The company said its Project Udaan programme helped customers place orders from the remotest places in India including Leh, Minicoy, Kiltan, Kalpeni, Champin, Trinket, Mile Tilek, Tirap, and Saiha.

Smartphones and large appliances were again the hottest products on Amazon India website during the sales period, the company said.

The Seattle-headquartered global marketplace, however, refrained from sharing any numbers and made similar claims of doubling its overall sales since last year.

It also said the highest selling product was 'Prime membership' which saw a four-fold jump in sales since the last Diwali.

Last year, Flipkart had claimed to clinch the first spot with sale of 15.5 million units. Whereas Amazon was just short of rival Flipkart with 15 million orders.