Festive fever: Amazon sales up three-fold; Prime membership top-selling item

E-commerce giant Amazon.in said sales on its platform grew three-fold compared to last year to over 15 million units during its five-day festive sale. Amazon.in’s festive sale is from October 1-5. Its rivals, Flipkart and Snapdeal, which started rolling out festive offers from October 2, will end their sale today. “We have seen a phenomenal growth this year, much bigger from last year. In the five days, we have already shipped 15 million units with a few hours still to go. This is 3X bigger than last year,” Amazon India country manager Amit Agarwal told PTI yesterday. [caption id=“attachment_2630222” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image[/caption] He added there was a five-fold growth in number of new customers with about 70 per cent of these new additions coming from tier II and III towns. Flipkart, India’s largest online retail company, said the company recorded its highest-ever single day sales on Monday and sold products worth Rs 1,400 crore. “Crossing the Rs 1,000-crore mark was a milestone for the company which began life by selling books nine years ago,” a ToI report said quoting Flipkart’s co-founder and CEO Binny Bansal. Flipkart said it had crossed a “historic first” for an e-commerce in India, crossing Rs 1,400 crore sales on its platform in a single day. As reported in Firstpost earlier this week, the company claimed to have sold over half a million products within one hour on Day 1 of the sale. “Within the electronics and gadget category, we sold more Apple watches in 10 minutes than the total sale of Apple watches online and offline in a month,” Flipkart said in a statement. Flipkart also said that the number of product units sold in the first 6 hours of sale surpassed the total units sold in a day during the first day of its The Big Billion Days in 2015. It added that some of the biggest categories that contributed to overall sales included smartphones, television and large home appliances, fashion, electronics, accessories and gadgets. “Over the last few months, we ensured that our logistics and delivery was well-equipped to handle this surge in volume and we have delivered efficiently,” Agarwal said. Interestingly, the top selling item on the platform was Amazon’s Prime membership. Launched in July, Amazon.in charges an annual fee of Rs 499 for Prime, where it offers guaranteed free one-day, two-day and standard delivery on eligible items. “Other top categories were mobile phones, fashion and FMCG, where the average growth was 5X than a normal day,” he said. According to research firm RedSeer Consulting, festive sales are expected to help e-commerce companies register transactions worth USD 1.5-1.7 billion in the month of October alone. Snapdeal said while its platform continues to get new users from tier II and III cities, there was heavy repeat usage from metros. Going by GMV figures, India’s retail market is around $500 billion while the online share was at $10 billion in 2015 and is expected to be in the reach of $18-20 billion in 2016.