E-tailing industry on track to deliver a GMV run rate of $20-23 bn in Oct

E-tailers are likely to surpass their own sales expectation during the ongoing festive season, according to research and consultancy firm RedSeer Consulting. e-Commerce marketplaces such as Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal and ShopClues among several other verticals are running huge sales campaign for the whole of October, which has ongoing festivals like Dusherra and Diwali.

RedSeer feels that the gross GMV (which means the total amount of goods sold on the e-commerce platform) for the entire e-commerce industry will be around Rs 6,500-Rs 7,000 crore during the festive period that is good enough to drive their respective annualised GMV.

​In a report, ​RedSeer ​says that, the bumper sales performance of e-tailers, the gross GMV for the e-tailing industry as whole is likely to be ~ $​1-1.2 ​billion in the ongoing festive week (Oct 1- October 6 2016). Almost 35-40 million units are expected to be sold in this six-day period.

Driven by this strong festive week performance, the industry GMV for year is expected to grow at ​Rs 11,000-​ Rs ​13,000 ​crore or ​$20-​$​23​ billion. This sales performance ​is critical for Indian e-​commerce sector, which has seen its growth stagnate over the last couple of quarters due to cut down on discounts by the players as they focus towards a profitable growth instead of focusing on the volume growth alone.

Commenting on the finding of the research, Anil Kumar, CEO, RedSeer Consulting said, “Our research shows that the ongoing festive sales week has proved to be a tremendous success for e-tailers. Customers, both regular shoppers and first-timers, have come online to shop in millions, from across the length and breadth of the country. As a result of this bumper sales performance, we see the industry being on track to deliver the single biggest month for Indian e-tailing sector ever, in October 2016.”

​Most of the players have had big-ticket festive campaign with Tyohar Bade Dilwala by Amazon, Big Billion Day by Flipkart to Unboxed by Snapdeal. Smaller players have not shied away from spending big money during this festive season.

Amazon.in, which is running its Tyohar Bade Dilwala campaign, has said that this festive season was three times bigger than the last years and that the marketplace has sold about 15 million products during the sale period. The Great Indian Festival by the Indian arm of global giant Amazon, saw a 30X increase in orders from Tier III and below geographies as compared to last year. The company said that it received orders from over 2000 new pin codes over last year.

Similarly, ShopClues said that it has witnessed a 5x growth in its sales during the Diwali season. Flipkart said that it had sold goods worth Rs 1,100 crore in the first day itself.