Ecommerce war not over yet: Flipkart, Amazon to battle it out in run-up to Diwali

The fiercely contested three-way online festival sale season drew curtains midway last week, and all the top three etailers - Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal - claimed to have posted stupendous sales performance over the previous year. However, media reports suggested that Bengaluru-headquartered Flipkart edged out its nearest rival Amazon during its 5-day sale event, as buyers thronged to purchase home appliances, mobiles and fashion-related products offered at a reasonable discount to market price.  By selling 15.5 million units in the five days online spectacle, Flipkart’s Big Billion Days (BBD) sale event registered gross sales of approximately Rs 3,000 crore during the five-day event, the Mint report said on Friday. On the other hand, Amazon India’s GMV stood at Rs 1,550 crore - Rs 1,650 crore, up 41 percent over the previous year, the Financial Express reported last week, while Snapdeal’s GMV sales rose 7 percent over the previous year to Rs 800 crore. Encouraged by the overwhelming response, both Flipkart and Amazon are now looking to extend their online sale events later during the month, especially, when the festival shopping fever reaches dizzy heights in the run up to Diwali festival. Amazon India, the US-based online retail giant’s local arm, will hold two more sale events, while the country’s largest ecommerce company Flipkart plans to come out with its offerings in the last ten days before the onset of Diwali festival, a  report in the Mint said today. After a tough battle last week, both online retail powerhouses (Flipkart and Amazon) would once again slug it out through multliple sale events in the lead up to Diwali, which was not the case in previous years, the Mint report said. “There will be targeted offers that will be coming out through the month, which is what we did last year for 30 days,” the report said quoting Amazon India chief Amit Agarwal. For Flipkart, after losing out on subdued sales in July and August to Amazon, the recently concluded five day successfull sale event helped it retain some of its past glory. In case of Amazon, the company will go all out to woo customers to close the gap with Flipkart and stay focussed with its aim of dislodging the latter from the number one position going ahead. Even before the multiple sale events are yet to take off, both the companies are already engaged in war of words, taking jibe at each other following the completion of the biggest online sales event last week. Last week, poking fun at the Seattle-based company Amazon, India’s online retail boss Flipkart said the US giant sold items like ‘churan and hing’ to boast its sales items in the festive season sale. To which, Amazon’s Amit Agarwal replied saying, “People not only bought.. mobile phones, upgrading through an exchange offer or the appliance that they could not get access to in their city or a TV… or furniture they couldn’t or the home appliance or the fashion they were looking to buy but they also bought churan and hing,” the Economic Times reported. This was evident after Amazon said that the shift in consumer buying preference can be related to its growing Prime subscriptions within two months of its launch. One out of three shipments was for Prime members during the sale period, the ET report said. As both Flipkart and Amazon enter the last lap of the festive season sale, it would be interesting to see how online sale events unfold over the next few weeks given the focus on both discounts and small-ticket items by the two companies.