With the conclusion of the first festive sale from September 22 to 30, the online retail platforms have seen a robust 27 percent yoy growth, clocking a sale of Rs 40,000 crore, according to a report by Redseer Strategy Consultants.
While this was 97 percent of the $5.9 billion that Redseer had projected for Festive Sale Week 1, the growth was higher than last year.
The Festive Sale week 1 included sale events conducted by all online retail platforms between September 22 and 30. And for platforms that did not run a sale during any of these dates, the report had considered BAU order volumes.
Flipkart Group maintains its leadership position, while Meesho is the second largest contributor in order volume.
“Flipkart Group (Flipkart, Myntra and Shopsy) continues to maintain its leadership position with 62 percent market share in GMV (gross merchandise value) during the Festive Sale Week 1. In terms of order volumes, Meesho, with its low AOV (average order value) and high penetration in Tier-II cities, emerged as the second largest player capturing approx 21 percent of the market share while Flipkart Group leads here as well,” Sanjay Kothari, associate partner, Redseer Strategy Consultants.
Mobile phones continue to lead the market.
“Mobile as a category continued to lead GMV share, contributing to 41 percent of the GMV, translating to 56,000 mobiles sold per hour. On the other hand, fashion contributed to 20 percent of GMV, which grew 48 percent y-o-y from last festive,” says Sanjay Kothari, associate partner, Redseer Strategy Consultants.
When compared to BAU (business as usual), mobile saw the highest growth at approx 7X while electronics and large appliances saw approx 5X growth, fashion at approx 3X growth, and other categories at approx 2X growth.
In terms of transacting shoppers, the number increased by 24 percent y-o-y with approx 65 percent of shoppers coming from tier 2+ cities. A whopping 75-80 mn shoppers placed orders across all platforms in festive sale week 1. Tier II cities witnessed highest y-o-y growth in online shoppers. Moreover, the spend per online shopper increased marginally by 3 percent during the recently concluded festive week. The growth in shoppers partially comes from the vast catalogue the e-tailers have been able to offer, financial constructs that aid affordability and tech innovations (like live commerce) that continue to drive adoption and excitement.
The report further gave the outlook for the rest of the festive period. It says that while the beginning of the last quarter was slow on demand, there was a good uptick in consumer sentiment and consumption in late August/ September. This, Redseer expects, will further lead to demand recovery building up to Diwali (24 October).