New Delhi: Amazon India on Friday announced that its festive season sale - The Great Indian Festival (GIF) - is set to begin from October 4.
The company said it will see participation from lakhs of small sellers, including over 75,000 local shops.
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“This year's Great Indian Festival is a celebration of the resilience of local shops and small and medium sellers. We are humbled by their spirit and delighted with the opportunity to partner and enable their growth, especially in view of recent challenges owing to the pandemic,” Amazon India Vice President Manish Tiwary told reporters, as quoted by news agency PTI.
Amazon India has over 8.5 lakh sellers on its marketplace.
Ahead of the festive season, several online shopping platforms hold multiple sale events around Dussehra and Diwali.
Flipkart has also announced its annual 'The Big Billion Days' sale from October 7-12 this year. While Flipkart’s sale will go on for 6 days as per the early announcement, Amazon's GIF is will be be a month-long event, PTI reported.
GIF 2021 will include over 1,000 new product launches from brands such as Samsung, OnePlus, Xiaomi, Levi's, Adidas, American Tourister, Pedigree and others.
The event will also include products from Amazon sellers under various programs like Amazon Launchpad, Amazon Saheli and Amazon Karigar.
Amazon India Vice President Manish Tiwary cited a recent study commissioned by the company and conducted by Nielsen to state that sellers on Amazon.in are optimistic about this festive season.
According to him, 98 per cent of the surveyed sellers said technology adoption and e-commerce have positively impacted their business.
Festive Season Sales Expected To See Growth
E-commerce companies see a significant chunk of their business coming in during the festive sales and they make significant investments ahead of time to ramp up their capacity and add features to be able to handle the spike in orders while ensuring a smooth experience for shoppers and sellers.
As per consulting firm RedSeer, e-commerce platforms are expected to potentially register over USD 9 billion gross GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) during the festive season this year as against USD 7.4 billion last year - a growth of 23 per cent.
In the first week of the festive season, these platforms are expected to clock 30 per cent year-on-year growth in gross GMV to USD 4.8 billion.
Gross GMV is the total value of goods sold on the platform prior to subtracting cancellation or return.
According to the report, in terms of categories, the mobile section will continue to dominate. It will be driven by new launches - and account for 11 per cent of the gross GMV (USD 4.8 billion) in the first week of festive sale.
The Electronics and Appliances category is also expected to grow (from 14 per cent share festive sales last year to 16 per cent this year), while fashion can see a steady recovery this festive season - as there is greater outdoor mobility of consumers and steady rebound of fashion/office wear.
Affordability constructs, including EMIs and Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL), are expected to be a strong growth lever in this category, the report had said, as reported by PTI.
The Amazon India Vice President said three broad categories - electronics, fashion, and everyday essentials - are expected to do well during GIF 2021.
“Customers do look forward to Diwali for multiple shopping needs and I would bucket it in three broad areas, first is electronics... second is everything around fashion and beauty... the third one which is a critical bucket is everyday needs, everything from home to grocery,” he stated.