E-commerce platforms have garnered $2.7 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) in the first four days (October 2 to 5) of festive season sales, according to estimates of Bangalore-based Redseer Consulting. Smartphones have contributed to 50 per cent of the GMV in these four days of sales.

The firm said the sector is on its track to achieve $4.8 billion GMV for the whole of the current festive week. This is a 30 per cent growth compared with $3.7 billion in the corresponding festive week in 2020.

Typically Amazon holds its ‘Great Indian Festival’ and Flipkart holds its ‘Big Billion Day Sale’ at the beginning of its festive sales. The total number of shoppers in 2021 festive season is projected to peak to 75 million against 52 million in 2020.

Ujjwal Chaudhry, associate partner at RedSeer, said, “With the festive sales lasting longer than last year (nine days compared with seven days) we see the customer demand being more spread out across the period than being concentrated in the first half of the festive week. To that tune, we observed sales of $2.7 billion across e-commerce platforms and we expect another $2.1 billion over the next five days.”

According to a survey by Redseer around 75 per cent of customers would buy equivalent to or more than last year across categories such as mobiles, large appliances, beauty and fashion. Sellers are estimated to offer around 10-30 per cent discounts on these platforms to push higher volume sales, the firm added.

Buy now and pay later is an emerging trend which is likely to account for around 10-15 per cent of the festive sales.