No clear no. 2 after Flipkart and Amazon isn't a serious competitor anymore: Kalyan Krishnamurthy

When the two largest e-commerce giants in the country start their festive season sale at the same time, the question of who is winning the fierce battle becomes inevitable.

According to Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy’s conversation with reporters, Amazon is losing relevance in India and there is no clear number 2 after Flipkart.

For him, Amazon is not a worrisome customer stealing competition anymore. Rather, it’s a “global platform for premium Indian books and home good buyers.” Simply put, he feels that Amazon is more of a platform for Indians to sell their products offshores, than engaging in purchases.

Reestablishing the victory with figures, Krishnamurthy claims that Flipkart has a market share of 75-80 per cent in smartphones, fashion, and home products this festive season.

The Indian e-commerce giant sure that it will meet its target sales figure within four days and might even close early.

Further, Flipkart crossed its last year’s Big Billion Days sales record in a mere 26 hours since the inception this year.

The company prepared its servers, set up warehouses, and strengthened delivery fleets to facilitate smooth functioning during the BBD. For instance, the company claims that at any point more than 1 million users were active on the app in an hour without facing any glitch.

In the future, the company wants to strengthen its claimed dominance in the market with affordable prices, financing options, exchange programmes, and sale of private labels.

Moreover, the company also plans to divest 20-30 per cent of its functioning into other growing markets in the country like education, content, and gaming as its target age group of 18-35 is also spending more and more time on those platforms.

While Flipkart may believe that Amazon has no relevance as their competition, the fact cannot be ignored that latter’s Great Indian Festival sale is in close competition with Big Billion Days, as consumers often compare prices on both platforms for the same product, and relying on the large user base of prime, Amazon does manage to divide the market keeping a major share for itself.

However, as much as these two fight each other in sales figures during this festive and discount season, the party coming out as the winner in this race are the customers who get mind-boggling discounts on a huge variety of products via both the platforms.

But with a business point of view, it would be interesting to see how the reality of this race pans out between Amazon and Flipkart, and how much the claims made by the native etailer turn out to be true and fruitful for the company and the industry in the longer run.