E-commerce companies likely to touch $7 billion in GMV this festive sale month: Redseer

E-commerce companies such as Amazon and Flipkart, among others are expected to report a massive jump in their sales during this year's festive sale month with the overall gross merchandise value (GMV) of the online retailers expected to reach $7 billion, according to a report by research and consultancy firm Redseer.

During the brief period of the first sale in the festive month, which mostly runs for 5-6 days, the GMV is expected to shoot upto $4 billion, a 50% growth as compared to the similar period of the previous calendar year.

The growth will be driven by COVID-19 driven massive adoption of online buying led by customers in smaller towns. It will further be pushed due to weak recovery of offline businesses.

The Jio effect may come into play, with the company playing a moderately strong role in growing sales in smaller cities.

Interestingly, just 30-35 percent of the shoppers are expected to come from the metro cities while 50 percent from Tier 2 and beyond cities. Around 20-25 percent will come from Tier 1 cities.

In terms of categories, fashion is expected to do well due its
relatively slow recovery rates post lockdown coupled with activities and
social gatherings increasing and aggressive discounts from platforms.

Long tail categories including home and home furnishings to do better
than anytime before due to high demand for upgrading work- from-
home/ study-from-home environment.

Mobiles and appliances which other used to be star performers are likely to remain strong but not as large as previous years as demand for these verticals has been somewhat satiated with category specific sales post lockdown.