E-commerce platforms, including social commerce and online groceries, garnered $2.7 billion in the first four days of festive season sales between October 2 and 5, according to RedSeer Consulting.
The firm said the sector was on its track to achieve $4.8 billion gross merchandise value (GMV) for the whole of the current festive season. The first four days of the festive week in CY20 accounted for 63% of the overall sales of the season, while four days this year brought in 57% of sales. Smartphones contributed some 50% of GMV during the first four days, according to a mid-festive analysis done by RedSeer. “With the festive sales lasting longer than last year [9 days compared with 7 days], we see the customer demand being more spread out across the period than being concentrated in the first half of the festive week,” said Ujjwal Chaudhry, an associate partner at RedSeer. “To that tune, we observed sales of $2.7 bn across e-commerce platforms and we expect another $2.1 bn over the next five days,” he added.
About 75% of customers would make purchases equivalent to or more than that of last year, while many sellers would offer ~10-30% discounts on platforms, with the goal of releasing higher volume sales, the firm added.
