New Delhi: The festive season saw a 71% rise in online shoppers this year—the result of aggressive discounting, marketing campaigns by e-tailers and a wider product range on offer.

Nearly 24 million shopped online, with the mobile phones electronics goods contributing to 80% of the total gross merchandise value this year, according to a Red Seer report titled Festive Sale Month Performance.

Last year, 14 million shoppers made digital purchases during the month-long festive season that ran from 9 October- 8 November, although these are not like-for-like comparisons as the festive season began in September last year. The number of customers from tier-II cities doubled to over 11 million during 9-14 October, the five days when online shopping portals like Amazon and Flipkart offer heavy discounts before Diwali, from over 5 million during the same period last year. While tier-II cities are steering the growth in e-tailing customers, there has also been a gradual decline in online shoppers from metropolitan and tier-I cities.

According to the report, the festive season sale witnessed a 43% year-on-year growth in GMV in the e-tailing industry. It clocked $4.3 billion in total GMV in festive months 2018 as compared to $3 billion last year. Most of the sales were driven by mobile and electronics category, which grew more than 50% over the last year. Other major categories this year were large appliances (10%) and fashion (11%).

India’s top retailers Flipkart and Amazon claimed record numbers during the festive season sale. Mint reported on 12 October that a report by Red Seer seemed to back up the claims of both companies, which together generated nearly $1.5 billion of GMV during the first days of the sale this year.

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