Scramble for WFH items in festive sales
2 min read . Updated: 22 Oct 2020, 06:34 AM IST
Premium- Flipkart’s ‘Big Billion Day’ (BBD) sale ended on Wednesday
- The six-day sale saw over 666 million visits on the e-commerce platform, as it made 10 million deliveries in the first five days in response to pent-up demand
Flipkart’s ‘Big Billion Day’ (BBD) sale ended on Wednesday on a high note, with demand for work-from-home (WFH) products and new customers making it the biggest sale for the Walmart-owned company.
The six-day sale saw over 666 million visits on the e-commerce platform, as it made 10 million deliveries in the first five days in response to pent-up demand.
Smartphones, large appliances and electronics like laptops, desktops, tablets and cameras are some of the top performers for both Flipkart and Amazon India, which also kicked off its month-long ‘Great Indian Festival’ sale last week.
Almost half of its platform visits came from Tier 3 cities and beyond during BBD, and customers from almost 1,500 new cities shopped for categories like fashion on its marketplace, Flipkart said. Before the sale, Flipkart had seen 36 million new app downloads.
Flipkart Fashion saw a 51% growth in customers from Tier II markets compared with the 2019 festive sale, with 16 million products sold by over 40,000 brands. Within the fashion category, comfort wear and athleisure wear from brands like Puma, Adidas and Nike were the top sellers.
Work-from-home was a key theme this BBD, with Flipkart selling 3.5 million audio devices and accessories, including one million headphones on day one. In furniture, too, WFH saw the highest growth with Flipkart installing 50,000 desks across India in the first five days.
With education moving to homes, Flipkart saw desktops followed by audio, camera and tablet sales spike. Premium smartphones sales more than tripled, driven by Apple, Google and Samsung.
For Amazon, too, tablet sales have seen a 300% increase, while premium smartphones gained traction in smaller cities.
Flipkart saw close to 110 orders being placed every second, with a 1.5x increase in transacting sellers and a 3x growth in sales over BBD 2019, making this festive sale its biggest ever.
“The revival in demand and resurgence of consumption is expected to remain even after BBD, as we continue to uplift the entire ecosystem. This was also the first completely virtual BBD, as we adapted to the advent of a ‘new normal’," said Nandita Sinha, vice-president for customer growth and engagement at Flipkart.
Around 3.5 million of the 10 million deliveries done were through kirana store partners in the first five days.
“Our broad estimates show that the average spend and transactions per customer are close to what we saw last year. This means that a lot of new customers would have fuelled GMV this year," said Mrigank Gutgutia, director, e-commerce, Redseer Consulting.
Gutgutia said smartphone sales have been a positive surprise with its share expected to cross 45% of overall online gross merchandise value (GMV).
