It’s quite a happening day for Flipkart – the company has announced its billion dollar funding and on the other hand, there are way too many frustrated customers talking about the way Flipkart is handling sales of Xiaomi Mi3.

The Xiaomi sale lasted only 5 seconds and entire Xiaomi and Flipkart team is celebrating the success without disclosing any numbers.

Mi 3 flash sale in India today, gone in… 5 seconds on @Flipkart @MiIndiaOfficial #GoneIn5secs — Hugo Barra (@hbarra) July 29, 2014

But here is the truth.

While Flipkart is learning from its Moto mistake (server crash etc), the company has created a nice ‘demand’ strategy wherein you need to register for the sale – and the result is often an experience one gets when using IRCTC’s tatkal service (blink and you are gone)

And Now, The Billion Dollar Question : How Much Inventory Has Flipkart Sold?

What can you sell in 5 seconds?

10,000 phones maybe?

The bigger truth

So far, Xiaomi has shipped less than 20,000 devices in the country.

Take a look (from Cyber Exim’s Trade report)

A total of 134442817+133113893 assessable INR value is what Xiaomi has shipped to India.

Divide it by the cost of the device (13,999), the actual number comes to ~19,112.

So today, Flipkart only sold 9603 devices!!

Ofcourse, the good news is that Flipkart sold 9,603 devices in 5 seconds (shows their strength as an ecommerce platform), but the bad news is that Xiaomi is creating an unnecessary demand hype for the product (great marketing strategy), when they don’t even have an inventory! And on top of that, the company has launched Mi4 (the next version) in China, which means you are being taken for a ride!

hat tip: amarpreet chawla.