All leading eCommerce players and Google India have come together to bring the concept of Cyber Monday to India — Great Online Shopping Festival — slated for December 12.
Cyber Monday is a marketing term for the Monday after Black Friday, the Friday following Thanksgiving in the US. The term was created by marketing companies to persuade people to shop online. The term made its debut on November 28, 2005, in a Shop.org press release entitled ‘Cyber Monday Quickly Becoming One of the Biggest Online Shopping Days of the Year’.
With over 137 million Internet users in the country, India is witnessing a growth in online activity and this is the first time an industry-wide initiative of this scale is being attempted to offer users across the country an incentive to gain from deals that they can find on the Web on a single day.
“The online shopping industry is already over $1.5 billion and with this initiative we want to reach out and promote online shopping to first-time buyers,” Rajan Anandan, Managing Director and Vice-President Sales and Operations, Google India said.
He said the industry has done a lot to promote eCommerce adoption in India and Google is partnering with them to provide users easy access to all the deals and it is expecting a good response from buyers across India.
The festival will see participation from over 50 partners such as eBay India, Flipkart.com, IndiatimesShopping.com, snapdeal.com, makemytrip.com, Yebhi.com, firstcry.com, Sulekha.com, Homeshop18.com, Croma, Gitanjali Group, Shine.com, Yatra.com, Indigo Airlines and Getit Infoservices.
The participating companies will also offer special deals to first-time buyers on their Web sites.
Among the products on offer will be jewellery, shoes, apparel, travel packages, books, kidswear, gadgets, watches, computer accessories, health and fitness equipment, home decor products and deals on real estate.
Apart from lining up deals, buyers will also get free shipping across India and learn more about online shopping, various methods of payments and how safe and convenient it is to shop online.
“It will expand our reach beyond the 18 million Snapdeal subscribers and will help us attract and reach more buyers,” Kunal Bahl, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Snapdeal.com said.
According to comScore, an independent firm measuring the digital world, in the November–December holiday season, $20.4 billion was spent online, marking a 15 per cent increase versus the corresponding days last year in the US.
It was led by Cyber Monday (November 26), which became the heaviest online spending day on record at $1.46 billion, it said.