Amazon Great Indian Festival to start from October 10

The sale goes live at a time when the e-commerce industry is not growing as fast as before in the country and is also hurt by inflation but the company remains upbeat.

Amazon’s flagship sale event, the Great Indian Festival (GIF), will be live from October 10. As has been the case in the past, its Prime customers will get early access to the sale, the e-commerce giant revealed on its app on September 25.

While rival Flipkart is yet to announce the dates for its flagship sale, the Big Billion Days (BBD), both, Amazon’s GIF and Flipkart’s BBD, have overlapped with each other in the past and will be the case even this year.

E-commerce companies run a series of sales from September to October and these festive season sales are crucial because they help capture the sentiment of shoppers which then determines the performance of companies. Cumulatively, festive season sales account for about 50 percent of the gross merchandise value (GMV) for e-commerce companies.

With customer sentiment remaining upbeat, festive season sales are poised to grow by up to 20 percent year-on-year (YoY) to touch Rs 90,000 crore in GMV this year, the analysts at Redseer had said earlier.

Several customers add products to their wishlist and complete their purchases during these sales because of the deep discounts the companies provide. For instance, Amazon’s GIF teases a discount of 40-60 percent across categories like smartphones, electronics and accessories, home and kitchen, fashion, TVs and many more products. The company is also partnering with the country's biggest lender, State Bank of India (SBI), to offer additional discounts to cardholders.

The sale teaser that went live

An email to the company seeking more details about the sale event remained unanswered.

Customers are also waiting to buy the newly launched iPhone 15, which has already been a hit in India. While some customers camped outside Apple stores for hours to buy the iPhone 15, others are waiting for the product to be live on e-commerce platforms during the sale.

The sale goes live at a time when the e-commerce industry is not growing as fast as before in the country and is also hurt by inflation but the company remains upbeat.

"We are seeing a trend of premiumisation across the industry even as we talk about rising inflation. My sense is that 2023 might be the best festive sales year of the last few years. We are very excited for Diwali," Amazon India head Manish Tiwary said at a company event last month.

In the run-up to the GIF, Amazon had also made a slew of announcements to better its product delivery. The e-commerce giant has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Indian postal service and has also partnered with the Indian Railways for a dedicated freight corridor that will help expedite deliveries for its seller partners.

Amazon even opened up its logistics network for use even by merchants, who do not sell on its platform.