Flipkart Beats Amazon In India’s Biggest-Ever Online Sale, Says Survey

Homegrown online retailer Flipkart has won the biggest-ever festive bout against global giant Amazon.

At least, that’s what a survey found. The e-tailing industry sold goods worth $1.5 billion during the five-day festival discounts, an increase of 40 percent over gross sales last year, according to a report by consulting firm Redseer Consulting.

The Big Billion Day sale of the Flipkart Group, which comprises Flipkart, Jabong and Myntra, accounted for 58 percent of the business, fuelled by higher recall among the online shoppers, said the report. That’s an eight percent growth over a year ago.

The Seattle-based company’s Indian arm, Amazon.in, could corner 26 percent of the total gross sales, a decline of six percentage points, said the report, which was based on 1,000-plus seller interactions and over 9,000 plus surveys.

This year’s discount war between September 21 and September 24 was billed as one of the biggest as online retailers were flush with funds after raising capital from a clutch of global investors. While Flipkart last month raised $2.5 billion from SoftBank, Paytm Mall received $200 million from Alibaba in March. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos had committed investments worth $5 billion in India.

“The amount of offers and financing option we saw on Flipkart was more attractive than that on Amazon, and Flipkart had a strong word of mouth,” Mrigank Gutgutia, engagement manager at Redseer Consulting, told BloombergQuint over phone while explaining why the domestic e-commerce company was able to extend its lead over Amazon.

Flipkart said in a statement that its business nearly doubled from last year and it sold nearly 13 lakh smartphones during the first 20 hours of the sale. Amazon sold 150 percent more smartphones, the company said in a release. Business for large appliances saw a four-fold spike during its Great Indian Sale.

Paytm, which is emerging as the third player in the Indian e-commerce story, said that new users grew nearly 25-30 times during its four-day sale. Customers from over 839 cities and towns ordered products from sellers across 270 cities, it said in a release.

In its previous report, Redseer had said that the Indian e-commerce companies have burned around $400 million for this year’s sale event.