BENGALURU: Amazon for the very first time has, announced a month-long festive sales in India beginning from October 17 — a day after its rival, Flipkart’s Big Billion Days sales kick-off. Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Mart, a relatively new entrant in the-commerce has already edged out Amazon, Flipkart in the grocery segment over last couple of months. It has also announced its foray into fashion, electronics categories.
Market research firm, Redseer expects e-commerce sales during this festive season to cross $7 billion.
Amazon India’s Vice President, Manish Tiwary while acknowledging a surge in the e-commerce demand due to Covid, stopped short of revealing the target revenues his company is looking at. He said that the e-commerce growth in India has accelerated due to Covid pandemic and that there is a likelihood that products in certain categories like gadgets, electronics, home appliances, décor and lounge wears will see a demand surpassing the pre-Covid levels.
Tiwary informed that an earlier survey conducted by th e-tailer in which 60,000 respondents participated showed that the demand for mid-range smartphones (Rs15,000- 20,000) has particularly increased. Similarly, there is an increased demand for laptops, Amazon devices and other gadgets as people practice work from home lifestyle during the pandemic. He added that the consumer behaviour has gone through a shift and that some categories including home appliances, gourmet food, home décor, furniture and lounge wear (fashion) were seen as favourites.
Roping in small and medium businesses has been a prime catch for e-commerce companies especially due to growing popularity of hyper local delivery model. Amazon has onboarded more than 1lakh kirana stores under its local shops initiative this year to ensure fast services. Tiwary said that platform has seen a 60% surge in onboarding the sellers during pandemic as businesses shift online. The e-tailer has also ramped up its logistics network with an addition of 200 delivery stations and tens and thousands of delivery partners across the network.