Priyanka Sahay & Durba GhoshMoneycontrol News
Bengaluru-based online marketplace Flipkart Sunday claimed it has bagged 70 percent of the overall sales the Indian e-commerce market witnessed during the five-day sale period that concluded last week. Amazon debunked the claim, calling it as 'poorly informed and speculative reports'.
The US-based online retail giant declined to comment further on rival's claims but insisted it remains the largest marketplace in India.
"Amazon.in remains the largest marketplace and the fastest growing one in Indian e-commerce landscape," Amazon India said in a statement.
Flipkart, on the other hand, said its sales doubled this year as compared to the last year period, even as it refrained from sharing the total units shipped or the value of goods sold.
Rival Amazon India did not share an overall growth figure but claimed half of the categories sold on its platforms doubled in sales over last Diwali. It also said the highest selling product was 'Prime membership' which saw a four-fold jump in sales since the last Diwali.
Last year, while Flipkart claimed to have gained the top spot with sale of 15.5 million units, Amazon had fallen marginally behind with 15 million orders.
"During this BBD, Flipkart did sales which equals 70 percent of the entire online e-commerce market in India. We created history by growing sales by 100 percent this BBD versus last year," said Smrithi Ravichandran, senior director at Flipkart.
##Smartphones led the game for Flipkart
While Flipkart did not share the total number of smartphones sold during the sale, it claimed that 1.3 million smartphones were sold within the first 20 hours of the category opening for sale.
Flipkart claimed this figure to be higher than the total number of smartphones ever sold across India in a single day, either online or offline.
In an earlier conversation with Moneycontrol, Rishi Vasudev, Vice President at Flipkart said together with Jabong and Myntra, Flipkart held 70 percent of the entire online market for fashion.
The company now claims to have grown to 80 percent, post the sale.
According to Vasudev, Flipkart fashion till recently held about 35 percent of the three combined together.
"Our focus this BBD was on providing our customers a vast selection of exclusives and unique products to shop from. That, as well as our innovative affordability constructs such as no cost EMI, buyback guarantee, and product exchange were utilized by customers like never before. We saw a large amount of sales being driven by our innovative affordability constructs," Ravichandran said.
"In terms of numbers, 30-35 percent of orders were placed using affordability constructs in products where such measures were available," she added.
Amazon said smartphone sales grew 2.5 fold while large appliances grew four fold as compared to last Diwali.
