The nearly-a-week-long online festive sales are likely to clock a gross merchandise value (GMV) of $4.8 billion in 2021 reporting a growth of 30 percent as compared to 2020, said consulting firm Redseer in its e-commerce festive season report.
Further, these sales are expected to clock over $9 billion GMV during the entire month of festivities. This is a 23 percent increase from 2020, wherein the players clocked a GMV of $7.4 billion.
The growth will be mostly driven by the accelerated online adoption which has been witnessed as an effect of COVID-19. Secondly, Tier 2 cities will continue to drive growth as they are 55-60 percent of the total shopper base this year. This number stood at 57 percent in 2020.
Flipkart Big Billion Days to have 100,000 kiranas, 375,000 sellers
On the other hand, as offline retail and mobility is recovering almost upto pre-COVID-19 levels, this will impact the online festive sale as customers may opt for offline shopping as well.
Further, categories have been evolving differently during these months which will see an impact during the festive sale as well. While mobile will continue to dominate driven by new launches, electronics are expected to see the second highest demand driven by range of selection, easy payment options including EMIs and Buy Now Pay Later among other factors.
Additionally, fashion is also expected to see a steady recovery this festive season with greater outdoor mobility of consumers and steady rebound of fashion and office wear.
The report finds that the sellers are very bullish on this year’s sales and are looking to recover the losses suffered due to COVID-19. Nearly 80 percent of the sellers surveyed agree that festive sales will play a key role in recovery from COVID-19 losses.
While Flipkart will run its eighth edition of the flagship Big Billion Days from October 7 to October 12, Amazon is yet to announce the dates of The Great Indian Festival.
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