During the 15-day festival period of Diwali in October, India’s top two web retailers Flipkart (in which Walmart is a majority stake holder), and Amazon clocked a combined sales figure of $4.3 billion. The festive sale period helps etailers shore up sales as this is when consumers plan large-value purchases and are also traditionally more open to spending on new items.
Flipkart led with 64% share of the combined gross sales while Amazon continued to fare higher in net promoter score that measures the loyalty of customers to a company. The gap between Flipkart and Amazon grew narrower in terms of gross units shipped. Flipkart’s share in terms of units stood at 56% while Amazon’s share was 44%.
While the number of transactions per user was higher on Amazon for the current year, Flipkart’s business in smaller towns and cities (tier 2 cities and beyond) were four times bigger than its peer in terms of gross merchandise value.
