Amazon expects festive season sale to jump two to five times; confident of clocking strong growth

E-commerce major Amazon is reportedly expecting its gross sales (excluding grocery) to jump two to five times during the Great Indian Festival sale, scheduled from 10-15 October, a media report said. “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,” Manish Tiwary, vice-president of category management at Amazon was quoted as saying by Mint. Amazon’s rival Flipkart, backed by American retail corporation Walmart, also expects gross sales from its Big Billion Days to double from last year to more than $1 billion (Rs 7,250 crore), according to The Economic Times. Flipkart will host its The Big Billion Days festive sale from 10-14 October. Amazon is confident of clocking strong growth this festive season in India, driven by the availability of a large selection of products and big brands as well as new customers coming onto its platform, especially from tier II and III towns. [caption id=“attachment_4501191” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. Reuters[/caption] Amazon India, which competes head-on with Flipkart, will be lining up new launches across various categories and dishing out discount offers to woo Indian shoppers. “Each festive sale (Great Indian Festival) has been bigger than the previous one. We feel confident because we have new customers coming in. More than 70 per cent of new customers are expected to come from tier II and III towns,” Amazon India Vice President (Category Management) Manish Tiwary told PTI on Thursday. He added that big brands like OnePlus, Xiaomi and Samsung across categories like mobile phones, large appliances and others are also lining up their products during the festive sale. The company doesn’t share country-specific details on number of customers and revenue. Asked about the segments that would drive growth, Tiwary said every category is expected to do well with many of them witnessing 10X growth. “We expect mobile phones, fashion and large appliances categories to do really well,” he added. Tiwary pointed out that the company is also lining up finance options, including EMI on debit cards and Amazon Pay wallet, to ease purchases through its platform. Amazon India has also set up a festive home showcase, where it is displaying more than 1,600 of the over 170 million products available on its platform. With inputs from PTI