Amazon questions RedSeer’s data on festive season sale

BENGALURU: Amazon India has disputed a market research report that claimed its arch-rival and Walmart-controlled Flipkart got majority of orders during last week’s festive season sales.

RedSeer Consulting said on Thursday Flipkart contributed more than half of the gross merchandise value (GMV), or the overall sale price of goods sold on a site, for the entire e-commerce industry during the sale. Overall, online retail surged more than 60% to $2.3 billion during the fiveday event, from $1.4 billion a year earlier, RedSeer said in a report.

Strongly disputing the figures, Amazon said its gross sales nearly doubled from last year’s Great Indian Festival sale. “We cannot comment on speculative reports that lack robust and credible methodology,” a spokesperson for Amazon India said in an email. The company “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% versus last year”, she said. “With orders from 99% of pin codes in just 4 days, Prime member signups surging nearly 3x, over 60% new customer growth with more than 82% from lower tier cities, the festive season has exceeded our plans,” she said.