Flipkart continues to lead festive season sales with 63% market share: Redseer

Walmart-owned ecommerce giant Flipkart (including Myntra and Jabong) continued to maintain its leadership position in the Indian festive season sales, capturing 63% share of the gross merchandise value (GMV) in the current year compared to 51% in 2018 and 58% in 2017.

US-headquartered Amazon, which is the only other dominant player in the festive sales, recorded 30% share of GMV compared to 31% in 2018 and 27% in 2017, said consulting firm Redseer.

Flipkart and Amazon accounted for over 90% of $3 billion goods sold during the festive season that commenced on September 26 and ended on October 4.

Flipkart was able to continue its strong performance, led by strong value prices, higher equated monthly instalment (EMI) adoption and diverse selection across categories marketed aggressively to reach customers widely, the report said.

Etailers saw 30% year-on-year growth in GMV with significant share coming in from tier-2 cities despite the challenging macro conditions.

The ecommerce companies have already announced Diwali sales starting October 12-13.

“Given the strong industry performance in the first sale event, the whole festive month up to end-October is expected to generate up to $6 billion in sales,” the report said

The festive season has largely become a two-player market with Amazon and Flipkart dominating during the sales period, Redseer said.

Among product categories, mobiles were the most preferred by the customers, contributing to 55% of GMV. The customers delayed their mobile purchases for the festive season, indicating a strong value buying proposition of the festive days.

“The first wave of the festive sale event has seen record GMV of almost $3 billion despite challenging macro environment, indicating that consumer sentiment on online shopping remains bullish,” said Anil Singh, chief executive officer and founder, Redseer Consulting.

“The larger push has come from Bharat customers (tier-2) migrating to online shopping driven by the strong value provided from the online retailers across categories including mobiles, which have shown a strong surge during sale event despite having a relatively slow-growing Apr-Sep,” he added. 

Customers preferred Flipkart due to higher discounts while electronics segment drew the crowd to Amazon due to Prime’s faster delivery and lower prices.

Ahead of the festive season, Flipkart had revamped its distribution centres, especially in tier-2 cities and Amazon had hired short-term contract employees across several cities and tweaked marketing policies.