12/12/12 was the single biggest online shopping day in India, what about 2013?

The Great Online Shopping Festival is an initiative by Google to promote online shopping in India. An initiative started last year, this three day event brings together hundreds of retailers offering discounts together on one platform. The concept of a one-day online sale originated in 2005 in the United States where many online shopping sites offer discounts on "Cyber Monday", the first Monday after the Black Friday, the day that follows the U.S. Thanksgiving. The concept then spread to other countries and hit India last year with GOSF.

During a press event leading on to this year's GOSF (which ironically didn't send out invitations to online media companies), some interesting numbers were revealed about last year. Some of the consumers in 2012 felt that the offers were not relevant enough but still, 12/12/12 turned out to be the biggest online shopping day in India according to Google.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder at One97 and Paytm (which is also one of the partners for GOSF) was live tweeting from the event and the there were some interesting slides about GOSF:

1) Traffic was 25% higher on GOSF as compared to the popular festivals like Navratri or Diwali when you'd expect more sales.

2) Apparel is predicted to be the largest vertical by 2017. This parameter is currently led by Electronics which is at 64%. The entire is market is predicted to grow by 8 times.

3) 18-20 million people have shopped online in India and close to 200 million people have used internet in India (majority on the mobile). The top three sites in terms of traffic are: Flipkart (16.5 M), Myntra (16 M) and Amazon (13.5 M).

These were some of the key highlights and GOSF 2013 will start from 11th Dec and last till 13th Dec. This initiative will see participation from over 200 partners and these eCommerce players are from across the sectors. This initiative doesn't necessarily mean the cheapest deals for people but it one festival where a large number online businesses come together and push more people to buy online. And it is almost a given that the country will witness the maximum quantum of eCommerce transactions and volumes in the coming three days, the only thing to guess would be which day?

Check out GOSF.