Amazon, Flipkart festive sales begins on September 23 amid macro headwinds

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Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart both have announced the beginning of their annual festive sales from September 23 to September 30. Industry players and analysts will be closely watching e-commerce platforms’ performance in this year’s festive season amid fears of inflation hurting consumer demand and online sales dipping due to increased footfall at offline stores.

Flipkart’s ‘Big Billion Days’ and Amazon’s ‘Great Indian Festival’ sales typically aggregate big bang discounts and offers across categories like fashion, cosmetics, electronics, home decor, appliances and others.

The debut week of the season is likely to see a 24 percent rise in online sales at $5.9 billion as against $4.6 billion a year back, according to a Redseer report last week. The festive season, which starts before Dussehra and goes up to Christmas in India, comprises almost 20 percent of the companies’ annual sales in the country, according to industry estimates.

Both the e-commerce marketplaces are focussing on making purchases more affordable through easy credit, enabling live commerce features on the platforms and expanding order fulfillment infrastructure ahead of the sales.

Amazon is upping the ante to gain traction with its payments arm during the festive season. It has announced rewards up to Rs 7,500 for customers who make payments using its gateway.

It has also announced a pay later credit line of as much as Rs 60,000. Meanwhile, Flipkart is promising a credit line of up to Rs 1 lakh for customers using its pay later service.

Moneycontrol earlier reported that buy now pay later players are expecting a banner festive season with as much as an 8X rise in disbursals compared to the same period last year despite regulatory hiccups.

Amazon has also increased its logistics capabilities to over 60 fulfilment centres and sortation centres across 19 states, and over 1,850 self-operated and partner stations that are gearing up for the festive season. It has also undertaken a 5X increase in railway lanes in the past three years to offer 1-day and 2-day delivery promises to customers in the hinterlands of the country.

Ahead of the festive season this year, Flipkart said it has onboarded hundreds of last-mile delivery hubs across the country and its largest fulfillment centre in Haringhata, West Bengal will process one million shipments a day.

The Walmart-owned company has also rolled out an option of open box deliveries for high-value items such as mobiles and electronics. As part of the Open Box Delivery process, the Flipkart delivery partner will open the product at the time of delivery, in front of the customer, who needs to accept the delivery only if their order is in an intact state.

Meanwhile, Softbank-backed e-commerce player Meesho, which has emerged as a challenger to both Amazon and Flipkart, has also announced its festive sales programme from September 23. According to media reports, its performance during the sales will determine the company’s fundraising trajectory in the near future as technology investors across the world have reduced their appetite for growth-stage businesses amid a period of global monetary tightening.