E-com’s Diwali dhamaka: while customers splurged, here’s how it went for e-commerce players

Compared to last year, e-commerce platforms seem to be better equipped at handling the incredible scale of Indian consumers this festival season. With app only sales, new offers on an hourly basis, and offers catering to night owls at midnight, e-commerce platforms have mostly hit all the right notes to keep a variety of consumers and their sellers happy this festival season. Here’s a status check on how some of the major players did.

Snapdeal

Jayant Sood, chief customer experience officer, Snapdeal reported, "We have seen 17x surge in order volume on the first day. All our efforts for this sale has paid off - 85% of orders placed yesterday have already been shipped out, and the rest 15% today.”

Snapdeal saw air-conditioners, washing machines and geysers selling the most. From today till the 17th, they are holding a Diwali sale across all categories and are expecting a hike in sales across these items.

ShopClues

ShopClues claimed that during their #ekzerokum 'Diwali Se Pehle Dhamaka' campaign their GMV peak run rates shot upto 4x (almost 2.5 - 3 lakh units expected to be sold on day one), spiking up the orders to around five times, compared to regular days. Shopclues’ top selling categories has been Mega Deals along with Diwali Flea Market. While their unstructured portfolio across fashion, home and general merchandise categories has been a hit, mobile and electronics deals continue to stock out at super value price points. “We expect the response to snowball to even higher figures as the campaign unveils. It's a testimony of the deep connect we have with our consumers,” said Nitin Kochhar, AVP – Categories, ShopClues.com.

Flipkart

Flipkart claims to have sold one million units in the first 10 hours of the sale and had 20 million total visits in 19 hours since the event opened on midnight.

Amazon

Amazon.in claims that the first day of 'The Great Indian Festive Sale' was the biggest day in their history. For comparison it was two times bigger than their previous 'Great Indian Freedom Sale' and four times bigger than the peak of last Diwali.

Amazon saw thousands of customers placing orders every minute for over 10 lakh products that were up for order. On the user experience and technical front they said that they had no technical glitches with their website or app.

Amazon saw customers across all channels across PC, app, and mobile web. But the traffic from mobile accounted for 70 percent. They also saw lakhs of new customers coming from cities like Aurangabad, Malappuram, Dhanbad, Kannur, Tiruchirappalli, Jamshedpur, and others. Amazon claims that on the first day of Navratra, small and medium scale business sellers on their platform saw 8-10 times jump in their daily sales.

Amazon saw orders from grocery and gourmet grow by 3X in unit terms as compared to their previous biggest day and 5X compared to the pre-sale period. They also saw products such as chocolates, Indian sweets, beverages, and organic staples with brands like Ferrero Rocher, Nestle, Haldirams, Bikano, Tetley, and 24 Letter Mantra contributing to 50 percent of overall units sold in this category. The standout though was Ferrero Rocher gift packs, which emerged as the most popular brand, accounting for 22% of units in the category.

Health and personal care witnessed a 4X growth in terms of overall units with FMCG brands being the top drivers. Surf Matic product range and feminine hygiene products were the top selling products in this category.

Apart from the major e-commerce platforms, the smaller, more niche platforms, and price comparison portal too witnessed growth.

Abhinav Choudhary, Co-founder Smartprix.com, an online price comparison portals and affiliate website, said, “We are already seeing more than 40 percent increase in visits of consumers on our portal for price comparison for Flipkart, Amazon, and Snapdeal due to festival times on day one. More than 300 percent increase than last year’s festival time day one and 200 percent increase in traffic too."