India Back on the E-commerce Sales Bandwagon

India’s top E-commerce companies Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart are in the midst of the first big sale since the pandemic.

While Amazon’s Prime members-only Prime Day Sale is a two-day event (August 6-7), Flipkart’s Big Saving Days is a four-day event (August 6-10). Deals on these platforms will include everything from mobile phones, laptops, TVs, and wearables, among others.

These mega sale events will help a lot of sellers move their inventory that has been locked up due to the pandemic and, more importantly, get their cash registers ringing. These headline events are expected to kick off a series of sales events for the remainder of the year.

“Prime Day provides an opportunity for the smallest of businesses to participate, rebound from recent challenges and grow their business,” an Amazon spokesperson told The Economic Times. The spokesperson also added that more than 77% of sellers are participating in Prime Day for the first time and 68% are launching new products

Amazon and Flipkart have introduced many customer-friendly features over the past few years, like no-cost EMIs, exchange offers, and other bundled payment offers over the past few years. These features will especially push customers to purchase more from online sellers in these times.

These sale events are already popular, but this year, it is expected that these events will push the envelope even further due to the heavy dependence of consumers on online shopping. The pandemic has been a shot in the arm for E-commerce and E-grocery firms as lockdowns were enforced across the country and consumers had to depend on these firms even for their most-essential requirements.

With restrictions being lifted across the country, non-essential deliveries are increasing by the day. Companies in the fashion, furniture, and electronics category will rely heavily on sales events like these to make some much-needed moolah as this year has been slow.

While India is back on the sale bandwagon, Amazon Prime Day in the US has been postponed and the Seattle-based behemoth has not announced a date yet for the much-awaited sale.

World over, even the naysayers have been forced to rely on E-commerce due to the pandemic. E-commerce firms have also streamlined their supply chains to cater to the increased demand and have now earned more loyal customers.

According to an eMarketer forecast report, US E-commerce sales will jump by 18% this year to reach $709.78 billion this year, representing 14.5% of total US retail sales, due to the COVID-19 impact.

E-commerce firms have increasingly been relying on better logistics operations to be the differentiator in these times. With a not-seen-before surge in demand, initially, these firms struggled to meet customer expectations. Effective logistics has ensured that these firms can now even do same-day and express deliveries. Even effective parcel sorting in the warehouse ensures quick delivery to customers.

Logistics will play a key role in determining the customer experience with more such sales events in the year.

Locus offers the best logistics optimization solutions to enterprises in the E-commerce space. Get in touch with us for a demo.