E-comm cos sell goods worth $4.1bn in first week of festive sale: RedSeer

New Delhi: E-commerce companies reported a 55 per cent jump in sale goods to USD 4.1 billion (Rs 29,000 crore) across platforms during the first week (October 15-21) of festive sales, research firm RedSeer said on Tuesday.

RedSeer, in its report, said the comparative number stood at USD 2.7 billion last year. RedSeer in its pre-festive sale had forecasted that platforms will clock USD 4 billion worth of sales this year.

Smartphones led the sale accounting for 47 per cent of total festive sales, driven by new launches and affordable models with Rs 1.5 crore worth of smartphones being sold every minute across the online platforms in the first week of 2020”s festive sales.

With a high share of tier-II and beyond shoppers coming in this time, Flipkart group emerged as overall leader during festive sales week one and accounted for 68 per cent of the total Flipkart group and Amazon sales (which together accounted for over 90 per cent of the total online sales during this period), the report said.

“E-commerce sector has exceeded the aggressive forecasts we had made a few weeks before the festive season week 1 started out. This points to a revival of consumption sentiment amongst Indian shoppers, where they have been shopping online in big numbers driven by massive selection, great prices and the convenience and safety of shopping from home,” Mrigank Gutgutia, Director at RedSeer Consulting, said.

In many aspects this is indeed a ”festival of firsts” for Indian e-commerce which will build a strong foundation for its future growth, he added.

The key factors that majorly boosted this year’s sale include affordability, mobile phones and tier-II growth wave.

These factors directly resulted in recovery of sales for brands and sellers, who have been strongly enabled by the online channels, to drive their sales growth which was affected by the COVID impact on offline channels, RedSeer said.

The report noted there was a massive addition of shoppers – the total shoppers during the first week jumped from 28 million last year to 52 million this year (85 per cent y-o-y).

Over 55 per cent of these shoppers came from tier-II cities like Asansol, Ludhiana, Dhanbad, Rajkot, among others – which proves a landmark achievement for e-commerce and points to the growing ”democratisation” and comfort with online shopping all over India, the report added.

Buyers preferred affordable price ranges this year for almost all product categories, instead of expensive items. The platforms enabled affordability this year with aggressive tie-ups through brands and financing deals, coming on the back of a bleak, pandemic-affected year, according to the report.

Fashion, while not as big a sales contributor as last year, showed resilience to reach 14 per cent of the festive days sales, despite the demand for formal and festive wear still being low, the report said.

Categories including Home and Home Furnishings have done better due to high demand for work-from-home and study-from-home infrastructure, it added.