New Delhi: Amazon.in, which started its festive sale on Saturday, said it has seen its “biggest over opening” and claimed it has sold premium smartphones worth Rs 750 crore within 36 hours on its platform.
Arch-rival Flipkart – which is backed by American retailer Walmart – also expressed exuberance saying it had seen 2-fold sales growth on the first day of its ‘Big Billion Days (BBD)’ sale compared to the opening day of the last year’s festive sale.
Both companies, however, remained mum on the total business generated on the first day of the sale. The ongoing sale is to close on 4 October. While there have been concerns around a slowdown in demand in some quarters, both Amazon.in and Flipkart have been upbeat about clocking strong growth in the festive sales. Reports suggest e-commerce companies could ring in close to $5 billion worth of sale this festive season. “With the single largest day of Prime sign-ups, and record number of customer and seller participation, this is the biggest opening day sale for Amazon.in,” Amazon global senior vice-president and India country head Amit Agarwal said. He added that 91 per cent of its new customers came from tier II and III towns with fashion and smartphone categories emerging as the top shopping categories for these customers.
The company said a large number of customers were coming to its platform through the Hindi interface that was launched last year. “‘Affordability programmes enabled record number of customers upgrade to premium phones with sales from premium brands OnePlus, Samsung and Apple exceeding Rs 750 crore within 36 hours. Large appliances and TVs saw record sales over the 36 hours with nearly 10X from an average business day,” Agarwal pointed out. He added that growth was seen across categories like fashion (5X), beauty (7X) and groceries (3.5X) during the first day of its Great Indian Festival compared to usual business days.