80% Snapdeal shoppers go local; Flipkart sale brings cheer to MSMEs

At the end of the “Kum Mein Dum” Diwali Sale, nearly 70 percent of the orders were received by sellers located beyond the top 5 metropolitan areas of the country. These include sellers in major non-metro commercial hubs like Jaipur, Surat, Ahmedabad, Coimbatore who receive a large volume of orders every year, including in the festive season.

However, what has been different this is the steady flow of orders also to sellers in smaller centres like Avinashi in Tamil Nadu for textiles, Palitana in Gujarat for footwear, Rewa in Madhya Pradesh for gaming accessories, Muktsar in Punjab for herbal products, Birlapur in West Bengal for home decor products etc, it claimed.

Sellers located in Delhi NCR, Mumbai Metropolitan region, Kolkata, Chennai & Bengaluru accounted for nearly 30 percent of Snapdeal’s total sale orders.

Flipkart said there were over 666 million visits on its platform during the Big Billion Days sale with over 52 percent of these visits recorded from Tier-III cities and beyond.

The platform witnessed 110 orders placements per second and 10 million deliveries achieved with more than 3.5 million deliveries done through Kirana partners in first five days of TBBD.

Nandita Sinha, Vice President, Customer Growth & Engagement at Flipkart, said, “Flipkart’s aim this festive season has been to bring resilience back into the community. TBBD 2020 has been a celebration of sellers, artisans, kiranas and Wishmasters, who have delivered unmatched value to our consumers.”

“The revival in demand and resurgence of consumption is expected to remain even after TBBD, as we continue to uplift the entire ecosystem. This was also the first completely virtual TBBD, as we adapted to the advent of a ‘new normal’ and its success comes on the back of the hard work of our teams across verticals and locations.”

This year TBBD saw 1.5X number of transacting sellers compared to last year, among whom more than 35 percent witnessed 3X more sales vis-a-vis TBBD 2019, according to Flipkart. The number of crorepati sellers went up 1.5X and the number of Lakhpati sellers saw a 1.7X jump. Flipkart marketplace has seen 40,000 Lakhpati sellers post COVID-19, it added.

This Big Billion Days further brought forth small businesses from smaller towns. Within the 35 percent-plus new seller base this BBD, around 60 percent of the sellers were from Tier-II and Tier-III towns.

The Flipkart Samarth program for artisans and weavers saw a 7X growth in the number of sellers. With the program reaching 7X more cities, over 60 percent Samarth sellers came from Tier-II and beyond cities with top performing categories being handloom cotton saree, home decor etc.

In the first 5 days, Flipkart has already delivered 10 million shipments with over 3.5 million shipments delivered by its Kirana partners (compared to 1 million deliveries last BBD 19), between October 16-21 across Mobiles, Fashion, Electronics, BGMH and home furnishing categories.

These deliveries were made across the country ranging from Indo-Pak border in Gujarat to 5,000 feet above sea level in Siliguri, West Bengal and through the jungles of Gir forest, the ecommerce company claimed.