New Delhi: Online retailer Amazon India, which plans to host its flagship Diwali season sale, the Great Indian Festival, in October, is expecting gross sales from the sale to jump at least two to four times compared to last year’s sale event, a top company executive told Mint.
Last year, Amazon pulled in roughly Rs 2,700 crore in gross merchandise value during its four-day Great Indian Festival, Mint had first reported in September last year. However, Amazon is hoping to put together a much better performance this Diwali, as it tries to gain an edge over arch-rival Flipkart, which has been the dominant player during Diwali sales for the past two years.
“We would expect business to be anywhere between 2x-4x as compared to last Diwali,” said Manish Tiwary, vice-president of category management at Amazon. “We are expecting a bumper Diwali in every sense. We believe we have a very complete portfolio of best-sellers, making it bigger and better.”
Mint reported in September that Flipkart was targeting sales of $1.5-1.7 billion in its annual Big Billion Days sale, nearly double of what it did last year. Together, Flipkart and Amazon are expected to record sales of $2.5-3 billion this year during the five-day festive season sales, according to Redseer estimates.
Amazon is also expecting a significant bump in the number of customers from Tier 2 and 3 cities, after it recently launched a Hindi version of its online marketplace website. Last year, more than 70% of its customers came from small towns during the festive season sale.
“With Hindi in play this time, the number of people shopping online will be much be larger. Going by the logic of the Hindi heartland, intuitively it will be more comfortable for people to shop,” said Tiwary.
Tiwary expects categories such as large appliances, smartphones, Amazon’s Kindle and Echo devices, fashion and wireless devices to drive a majority of sales for Amazon during this festive season.
The Seattle-headquartered company is expecting television sales to grow 10 times as compared to last year with brands ranging from TCL and Xiaomi to Sony among others. The company also claims to offer installation of large electronic appliances within 48 hours of delivery.
Amazon India typically boasts of a greater assortment of products during the festive sale unlike Flipkart, which focuses on putting together a compelling collection of exclusive brands. This festive season, however, Amazon has also stacked exclusive launches and partnerships with brands such as OnePlus, Xiaomi and LG among others.
The festive season typically sets the scene for the biggest annual showdown in Indian e-commerce between Flipkart and Amazon and is also a key indicator of the growth momentum for the coming quarters. Over the past two years, Flipkart has beaten rival Amazon India during the Diwali sale.
“We are not worried about competition. We have so much going on at this point in time and we are focussed on our customers,” said Tiwary when asked about Amazon’s rivalry with Flipkart.
The company now houses 20 million cubic square feet in infrastructure space, including fulfilment centres, as compared with 13.5 million cubic square feet last year. Even though private labels currently account for a small percentage of Amazon’s overall sales, the company will push private brand sales and focus on customer reviews and ratings for feedback.
“We are not trying to build a private label business or anything, but if we see a gap and our partners are not interested we will enter,” said Tiwary.
