$8.3 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV), up around 65% from the previous year had been cloaked by the e-commerce sector in the festival sale period between mid-October to November. In the overall GMV cloaked by e-commerce firms in the festive season, Flipkart group comprises of 66%. GMV stood at $5 billion when it was cloaked by e-commerce during the festive month. There was 88% customer growth compared from this year to last year. About 40 million people came from Tier 2 and cities bought on the e-commerce platform. 55% from tier 2 and 45% from tier 1 and metro cities, overall, 88 million consumers bought or purchased goods on e-commerce this festival season. During the last year, about 47 million people bought goods from e-commerce.
Pent up demand by customers, wide selection across categories, pre-sale awareness, disruption of offline stores along with many credit and affordability constructs helped many e-commerce players to keep up the growth this festival season. E-commerce has become more mainstream than ever which was a clear lesson in this festive season. It has also proven that with the right assortment at the right price which is delivered according to the safety of the customers’ home, the value proposition of e-commerce is considered to be very powerful.
Mrigank Gutguita the Director of E-commerce of RedSeer Consulting commented that it is imperative for brands and sellers to shift to online and enable a seamless online experience for the customer in order to survive in a post-COVID world. Smartphone begone to dominate across all the products in the category mix with an increase in the shares of users from Tier 2 cities. People are doing work-from-home due to COVID-19, large appliances and electronics had gone a jump which cloaked about 29% of the overall GMV during the festive sale. Fashion took a minor hit during the festival sale as pandemics have made a restriction on the ‘stepping out’ behavior of the customer.
Redseer added that GMV per customer also dropped to Rs6600 from Rs7450 in the last festive year. In the first week of the festive sales 2020, a total of 52 million shoppers flocked on e-commerce websites, the customers coming from cities and towns are 57% or 31 million. The increase in number has really made the festive sales take up the lead compared to the sales on last year festive.
