Flipkart races ahead of Amazon in festive season sale

Walmart-owned Indian e-commerce player Flipkart has managed to maintain its lead over its biggest rival Amazon in the recently culminated festive season sale, The Economic Times has reported. Both the players have bettered their performances and doubled their gross merchandise value (GMV) as against last year.

The industry experts have estimated that Flipkart has registered a GMV of $1-1.1 billion in its five days of Big Billion Days (BBD), in comparison with last year's $660 million. Its rival Amazon India sold products worth $700-800 million during its 6.5 days of Great Indian Festival; hence selling the products almost two times it sold last year which was $380 million.

At an employee gathering, CEO Binny Bansal announced that the company has done great in terms of sale and "sold almost two times more units when compared to last year." According to the company claims, its GMV went up 80 per cent as against last year's sales and witnessed 50 per cent growth in new customer addition over last year.

Its competitor, Amazon India claimed to have sold its product twice the times as compared to previous year. The prime members of Amazon ordered three times more than it did last year during the festive season. Amit Agarwal, head of Amazon India in a statement said that "We saw 2x-3x sales over last year, thousands of our sellers saw higher sales and more new customers joined us from smaller towns."

In total 67 per cent of the transactions were done through digital payment and two third customers availed the financing programs. Aggarwal further added that "We saw at least one order from 99 per cent pin codes in the country."

The recently launched Hindi website of Amazon has helped the company to reach out to the new shoppers from smaller towns and cities, with 82 per cent of its new customer hailing from towns and cities.

Redseer Management, a consulting firm, has highlighted that the online retail market has registered growth at a faster rate in the current year at 64 per cent to $2.3 billion as compared to previous year when it increased by 43 per cent to $1.4 billion.