The Flipkart Big Billion Days, earlier expected to be held from October 7-12, will now reportedly be rescheduled to October 3-10, starting a day ahead of Amazon’s Great Indian Festival sale that starts October 4.
Walmart-owned Flipkart has advanced the Flipkart Big Billion Days sale or TBBD sale to October 3, just one day ahead of rival Amazon’s Great Indian Festival (GIF) sale. The Flipkart Big Billion Days sale was earlier scheduled to be held from October 7-12. However, an internal memo now says it will be held from October 3-10, according to a PTI report.
The memo to employees, from Flipkart Group CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said TBBD is “critical” for lakhs of sellers to revitalise their businesses after the pandemic and also generates “massive scale of employment across the supply chain.
Krishnamurthy said the event has the “potential to make a deep positive impact on the lives of everyone who engages with us” and the company has hence decided to make this TBBD “bigger for all stakeholders”. He said changes to the plans would enable this and the event would now begin on October 3 and end on October 10 – making it an eight-day event.
Flipkart did not respond to PTI’s queries.
Notably, the advancement in dates comes a day after Amazon India’s announcement that it will host its month-long Amazon Great Indian Festival sale from October 4.
This is not the first time the companies have butted heads with their sales events, the deal offers and new launches and partnerships during the festive season. Sources also told PTI that sellers are being informed about the changes and the new dates are expected to be up on Flipkart’s website and app “soon”.
Flipkart-owned Myntra is also holding its ‘Big Fashion Festival’ from October 3-10. Notably, festive sales by Amazon and Flipkart are timed around Dussehra and Diwali. They see an annual business jump and make a significant investment to ramp up capacity and features to handle the higher order volumes.
According to consulting firm RedSeer, e-commerce platforms are expected to potentially clock over $9 billion Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) during the festive season this year as against $7.4 billion last year – a growth of 23 percent.
During the first week of the festive season, these platforms are expected to register 30 percent year-on-year (YoY) growth in gross GMV to $4.8 billion. Gross GMV refers to the total value of goods sold on the platform prior to subtracting cancellation or return.
The report highlighted that in terms of categories, fashion is expected to see a steady recovery this festive season – in line with greater outdoor mobility of consumers and a steady rebound of fashion/office wear.
(With inputs from PTI)
