Amazon vs Flipkart: E-commerce giants claim big chunk of sales as festive offers end

New Delhi: The year’s first online festive sale saw rivals Amazon.in and Flipkart making contradictory claims with the US major asserting that it has secured 2X orders than its nearest competitor, while the homegrown player said it had 60-65 percent market share during the three-day period. Amazon.in hosted its ‘Great Indian Sale’ between 21-24 January, while Flipkart held its ‘Republic Day Sale’ from 21-23 January. Citing Kantar IMRB data, Amazon India Vice President (Category Management) Manish Tiwary said “Amazon.in had the highest share of orders with 2X more orders than nearest competition” in the first three days of sale. [caption id=“attachment_4211203” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. AP.[/caption] Also, Amazon.in had nearly double the number of transacting customers over its nearest competitor, he said. Smrithi Ravichandran, Senior Director at Flipkart, countered Amazon.in’s statement saying Flipkart continues to maintain the lead as the largest e-commerce player in the country on the back of a stellar sale. “During the 3-days period, our share of the e-tail market would be between 60-65 percent,” she said. Amazon is locked in an intense battle with SoftBank-backed Flipkart. Both companies have pumped in billions of dollars in expanding infrastructure and delivery capabilities. Tiwary said the company acquired the highest number of new customers ever in one single event, outside of Diwali sales, with 85 percent of the new customers coming in from tier II-III towns. He added that there had been a strong uptake across categories including smartphones, large appliances and apparel during its sale. “Smartphones were the most popular category with a sharp increase of 6X over a normal day…Large appliances also grew over 4.5X,” Tiwary said.