Flipkart grabs 51 per cent, Amazon 32 per cent of festive season sales

Chennai: Of the USD 2.3 billion gross merchandise value (GMV) garnered during the five-day online festive season sales, Flipkart cornered a higher market share of 51 per cent, followed by Amazon at 32 per cent.

As per the study done by RedSeer Consulting on the sales, both Flipkart and Amazon together took away a large slice of the market pie as big as 83 per cent. Of the USD 2.3 billion or Rs 15,000 crore GMV, Flipkart grabbed Rs 7,650 crore, while Amazon made transactions worth Rs 4,800 crore.

The remaining 17 per cent or Rs 2,550 crore went into the kitty of Snapdeal, ShopClues, Paytm Mall, Myntra, Jabong and a long tail of smaller e-commerce companies.

Flipkart did not respond to Financial Chronicle’s query on whether they subscribed to the market share data brought out by RedSeer. Amazon said it cannot comment on speculative reports that lack robust and credible methodology.

“We received an overwhelming response to the Great Indian festival, with first 36 hours nearly surpassing the entire first wave last year and the entire wave growing by 96 per cent versus last year. Additionally, with orders from 99 per cent of pin codes in just four days, prime member signups surging nearly 3 times, over 60 per cent new customer growth with more than 82 per cent from lower tier cities, the festive season so far has exceeded our most aggressive plans,” Amazon spokesperson said.

Amazon had earlier also disapproved Flipkart’s claim of grabbing 70 per cent share of the online festive season sales. Flipkart, however, had not mentioned their estimates of GMV of the total online sales while making the claim.

According to RedSeer, it had used an integrated approach to arrive at market share. It had interviewed an empanelled group of experts across the ecosystem, taken inputs from supply chain experts on estimates of shipments, bank and wallet experts on digital transactions, brands on their performance and share and category experts who were able to provide inputs on performance of different categories.

The methodology also included customer surveys and in-depth interviews to understand the mind-share and perception of competitiveness across platforms, seller interviews, inputs from deal websites, player estimates and other research areas, which include scraping of online data and mystery shopping.

RedSeer also found despite all the categories growing, consumer electronics and large appliances saw its share shrinking from 26 per cent last year to 23 per cent this year.

“While the fashion and smartphone verticals grew by 78 per cent and 70 per cent, respectively, consumer electronics grew by only 45 per cent. This is despite large investments by both players in supply chain and affordability initiatives like debit card EMIs,” said Ujjwal Chaudhry, engagement manager of RedSeer Consulting.

However, mobiles and consumer electronics continued to account for more than 75 per cent of the festive sales. This year saw higher participation by fashion shoppers, which made it the fastest growing vertical, he added. Mobile phones increased its share from 53 per cent to 55 per cent and fashion from 13 per cent to 14 per cent.

Day two of the 5-day sale was the biggest in terms of GMV as it saw the launch of multiple new exclusives in mobile phones and offers on other platforms as well. After second day, the growth of GMV stalled a bit with last 3 days accounting for only 42 per cent of sales compared with 60 per cent in the first two days.

The same trend has been observed in the past years as well. This indicates the customers’ intent to buy before the sale starts. The last year’s GMV was surpassed by the end of the second day.