Amazon, Snapdeal continue to post robust festive sales

Moneycontrol Bureau E-commerce companies such as Amazon and Snapdeal continued to report robust demand from consumers with categories including consumer electronics and kitchen appliances showing massive sales growth on Monday.While Amazon reported 20-fold growth in consumer electronics category, Snapdeal said sales of microwave, ovens and OTG surged 30 times.Brands such as women apparel firm Ziyaa, men’s suiting brand Raymond, footwear firm Hush Puppies reported 44x, 23x and 19x growth respectively, under Amazon Fashion.Auto category reported 5 times growth on Amazon with bike riding gear seeing 25x growth.Amazon said that its app saw five times growth in new users.Mobile as a category gained traction and witnessed 1.2x growth as compared to the first day of sale. The company added that the first three days for the category was comparable to an entire month’s sale, adding that Lenovo, Moto, Xiaomi and Samsung were among the popular brands on the platform.Amazon has been running Great Indian Festival Sale since October 1, while Snapdeal launched Unbox Diwali Sale on October 2.Bangalore, Delhi and National Capital Region, Surat, Mumbai, Ludhiana, Hyderabad, Pune, Chennai, Kolkata and Tirupur were the top seller cities during this period on Snapdeal. Snapdeal also claimed that its advertising platform witnessed a 5x surge in revenue as sellers rode high on the festive demand. It, however, did not disclose the numbers.Snapdeal offers 50 million plus products across over 1,000 categories. It has over 300,000 sellers and delivers across 6000 cities in India.This year's festive sales are expected to be a make or break for Indian e-commerce firms including Flipkart and Snapdeal who compete with rival Amazon.In June, Amazon.com Inc announced an additional investment of $3 billion into its Indian unit. This comes after it exhausted its investment of $2 billion announced in July 2014.Amazon's fresh infusion comes in at a time when home-grown e-commerce firms are struggling to raise funding.Jasper Infotech Pvt. Ltd, which runs e-commerce firm Snapdeal, in February announced it was raising $200 million from Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, among others.