Amazon has been to the moon and back 7 times this festive season

Just as Amazon India is getting ready for its second four-day-long sale in three weeks on October 4, the e-commerce titan has announced its success in the Great Indian Festival from September 21–24.

In a statement, the US-based company said that it received orders from 99.3 percent of India’s postal codes during the sale, during which time it delivered, on an average, 23 packages per second to its customers across India.

“To deliver the packages, we travelled a distance which is equivalent to travelling from Earth to the moon and back seven times,” the statement adds.

Building numbers

Amazon says 85 percent of the Prime orders were delivered in two days post the sale. Amazon’s biggest rival, Flipkart, has claimed that its logistics arm Ekart has created a new record of handling over two million packages in a day at its main Bengaluru hub during the Big Billion Days (BBD), the company’s biggest sale in the year conducted over the same period as Amazon's Great Indian Festival.

Amazon also claims to have created opportunities for more than 22,000 seasonal associates this festive season, while Flipkart added 20,000 temporary staff this time.

Amazon India had recently inaugurated its fifth fulfilment centre in Telangana to widen its reach and also prepare for the upcoming festive season.

Taking logistics to the next level

Curiously, both Amazon and Flipkart have gone an extra mile — or many — to cover India's northeastern region, with Amazon Logistics now in Tripura, Jharkhand, and Meghalaya while Ekart has a direct presence in every state in the country except Nagaland and Manipur and in all union territories except Andaman and Nicobar and Lakshadweep. Amazon has covered Lakshwadeep too and even launched its highest delivery station in the world in Leh-Ladakh.

Amazon’s 40 bulky stations processed 20X peak volume compared to a normal business day.

“On the peakiest day, we flew packages on more than 250 flights enabling fast deliveries for our customers,” the company statement adds.

According to a report by research and advisory firm RedSeer Consulting, during this festival season, online retail firms had sales of $1.5 billion compared to the $1.05 billion last year. Although the report claims that Flipkart’s market share was 58 percent and Amazon’s 26 percent, the coming four days might add to Amazon’s fortunes for Diwali.