Festive sales: Flipkart claims 70% market share, Amazon's fashion segment a hit

Employees of Amazon India are seen behind a glass bearing the company's logo inside its office in Bengaluru

Walmart-owned Flipkart on October 15 claimed 70 percent market share of the entire Indian e-commerce space during the five-day festive sale, with the total value of goods sold almost doubling.

"Gross merchandise value is 80 percent of last year whereas units grew by close to 2X year on year," the company said in a statement.

While rival Amazon did not comment on market share, it said that the fashion segment emerged as its biggest category in terms of units sold, with 63 percent orders in this segment coming from tier 2 and 3 cities, as its six-day festive sale came to an end.

Interestingly, Flipkart claimed 85 percent share in the fashion category of the online market.

While Amazon's The Great Indian Festival sale concluded on October 15, Flipkart's Big Billion Days ended a day earlier.

Amazon claimed to have sold over 1 million Xiaomi smartphones in a day and Rs 400 crore worth of OnePlus phones in one day. It did not share the units sold by OnePlus. While Xiaomi phones on Amazon registered a 200 percent growth over last year's Great Indian Festival, the growth for OnePlus was 100 percent.

"We have received an overwhelming response to the fifth Great Indian Festival, with sales in the first 36 hours nearly surpassing entire first wave last year and the event exceeding our most aggressive plans across all categories. With 3x times surge in Prime member signups across the country, more than 80 percent of new customers coming from small towns, and orders from 99 percent of serviceable pin-codes in just four days, we are humbled that Amazon.in is trusted by India to find, discover, and buy anything online," said Amit Agarwal, senior vice president and country head, Amazon India.

Flipkart, however, said it saw 3 million smartphones sold on a single day, claiming 85 percent of overall market share for that day.

Amazon, on the other hand shared that 80 percent of new customers came from small towns and added that new customers on its Hindi website grew 2.4x over a normal business days. The Hindi version of the platform was launched last month to boost its presence in smaller towns.

Both Amaozn and Flipkart have launched easy payment options this year to attract small town and first time buyers. Amazon claimed that 70 percent of EMI customers who shopped came from tier 2 and smaller towns.

Amazon Pay, the payments arm of the company witnessed a three fold increase in daily active users as compared to an average business day.

Flipkart on the other hand claimed that 50 percent of its customers used payment options like EMIs and bank offers driving 60 percent of overall sales and enabling customers to upgrade products in categories like mobile, TVs and laptops.