Flipkart crosses 10 Mn shipments during festive sale; Amazon claims surge in sellers’ participation

The festive season has brought record-breaking spike in traffic and transactions for Flipkart and Amazon. The first phase of festive season sale concluded on October 21 and The Big Billion Days or TBBD has claimed to witness 110 order placements per second during the six day period. 

While over 666 million visits were recorded on the platform, more than 52% of these visits came from tier III cities and beyond, as per Flipkart’s press statement.

The Bengaluru-based firm saw a 50% increase in terms of sellers’ participation as compared to the last year. However, the company did not reveal any relevant metrics such as number of transactions, gross merchandise value or GMV.

The Walmart-controlled firm claims to have delivered 10 million shipments in the first five days of the festive sale with over 3.5 million shipments delivered by its Kirana partners. Mobile phones, fashion, large appliances, electronics, and furniture were the largest selling categories on the platform.

“....This was the first completely virtual TBBD, as we adapted to the advent of a ‘new normal’ and its success comes on the back of the hard work of our teams across verticals and locations,” said Nandita Sinha, vice president of consumer growth & engagement at Flipkart.

The mobile segment recorded 2X growth in customers visiting the category this year, whereas fashion and large appliances accounted for almost 51% growth in customers from Tier II markets.

Amazon, on the other side, claims more than 1,10,000 sellers have received an order on the platform out of which 66% came from tier II & III cities during The Great India Festival. Similar to Flipkart, top sold categories at Amazon were smartphones, large appliances and consumer electronics.

“More than 66% of new prime member sign-ups during Prime Early Access were from tier II & III cities,” said Amazon in a press statement.

Hurting from the Covid-19 induced pandemic, the festive season sales were crucial for both Amazon and Flipkart. Just before their flagship sales, Amazon infused Rs 1,125 crore in internal funding while Flipkart also completed a $1.3 billion round from Walmart, Tencent and Qatar Investment Authority

US-based market research firm Forrester report had estimated the sales to be nearly $6.5 billion in GMV, a 34% year-over-year growth as compared to the last year figure with more than 55-60 million online buyers expected to participate in the sale.