Higher spends, smartphones, white goods bloom: Online festive sales for 2023 look promising

The first phase of festive sales across ecommerce platforms saw nearly 15% better buoyancy compared to the muted growth in 2022, according to industry experts. While Flipkart, Amazon and Meesho dominated the show, vertical-specific ecommerce players, including Nykaa and Croma as well as direct-to-consumer (D2C) brands, hope to cash in on the next few weeks to come up with their festive season sale events.

The festive season sale began on October 6 with Meesho Mega Blockbuster Sale while both Flipkart Big Billion Days Sale and Amazon Great Indian Festival Sale kicked off on the midnight of October 8. Other than Amazon, the others concluded on October 15 and were longer than the five-day sale period of 2022. 

Industry experts say that 2023 saw higher spends during the first phase of sale, promising to continue over the 40-day festive sale period. 

“At an industry level, the ecommerce order volumes grew by nearly 1.4X across marketplaces during the first phase of festive sales over Business-As-Usual (BAU),” says Ashish Sikka, Chief Strategy Officer at third-party logistics company, Ecom Express. “We are looking forward to closing the festive season sale at 55% rise over BAU,” he adds.

The logistics players work with multiple ecommerce platforms including Flipkart, Amazon, and Meesho. He further added that the logistics platform also saw a decline in Cash on Delivery orders by up to 5% from average due to better discounts and a push towards prepaid deliveries by the marketplaces. 

Top categories

Smartphones continued their dominance in terms of being the major contributor to Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) of ecommerce marketplaces. 

Flipkart reported that its premium smartphone segment grew by over 1.7X over the previous year’s sales. According to a report by market research firm RedSeer Strategy Consultants, mobile phone sales contributed to nearly 41% of GMV during the festive season sale for ecommerce platforms in 2022. 

GMV is a measure of the total value of the goods sold over a fixed period of time. 

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“Apart from smartphones and electronics dominating this sale season with deep discounts and exciting exchange offers, TVs, laptops and large appliances have seen a massive rise in demand. These categories will drive the most GMV for us during the sale season,” Rohan Bhargava, Co-founder of cashback site CashKaro, tells YourStory. 

According to the affiliate marketing platform, the fashion category grew by 10X over BAU for CashKaro, while beauty and personal care recorded a jump of 14X in GMV, notes Swati Bhargava, CEO and Co-founder at CashKaro. 

Value-commerce platform Meesho saw a surge in orders across home and kitchen, fashion as well as beauty and personal care categories. 

The next wave

While the recently concluded sale events have set the ball rolling, the majority of the online festive sale period will be covered over the month of October. Industry watchers opine that sales over D2C brands as well as the likes of Nykaa and Croma will focus on capturing the latter part of the sale period as they don’t have to match up the marketing budgets of horizontal commerce platforms. 

“The D2C sales are muted during the marketplace sales, and reach their peak between November-December when a lot of the first-time online shoppers who were drawn in by the sale are willing to experiment with brands,” says Atul Mehta, Chief Operating Officer at ecommerce logistics platform Shiprocket.

He adds that the first phase of festive sales has also seen growth from sellers in discretionary categories.

Swati Bhargava of CashKaro notes, “The notion of D2C being restricted to fashion, beauty and personal care is changing and we are seeing more traction on electronics, eyewear and other categories.”

Overall, customers can expect additional opportunities to cash in on the festive sale frenzy in the coming days.