Flipkart says competition snuffed out this festive season

Flipkart, the country’s biggest e-commerce marketplace, said it had “obliterated the competition” during its month-long festive sale period. It says sales rose over four times compared to its normal working days.

Prior to the start, its target was capturing 70 per cent in India’s online commerce space. Without giving any data, its senior director, Smrithi Ravichandran, said: “We have made the competition irrelevant and surpassed them on every count. In a lot of categories where we were the underdogs going in, we believe that we have beaten them. I hope independent folks can attest this but we’re certain we’ve won.”

Flipkart said it was able to grow sales in every major category on its platform — smartphones by five times, large appliances by 10 times, fashion and home by four times and electronics by seven times, compared to 30 days in a non-sale period.

Ever since the start of this festive sale season on September 20, there has been a war of words between Flipkart and its chief rival, Amazon. Both claim to be larger than the other in India but refrain from sharing the information on unit sales or gross merchandise value of product sold on their platform.

Market analyst RedSeer Consulting estimated sales on e-commerce marketplaces during the first five-day sale period at ~9,000 crore, of which it said Flipkart had 58 per cent and Amazon another 26 per cent market share.

Last week, RedSeer said the e-commerce market in India would top ~20,000 crore in sales during the festive month, 50 per cent growth over the same period last year. However, when asked by

Business Standard, it said it wasn’t ready to announce market share figures between the two main players.

“There have been limited cases of shopper fatigue in spite of frequent sales events. Many shoppers have shifted their buying to online, attracted by the offers and greater convenience,” RedSeer said in a note last Tuesday.