Flipkart Group and Amazon corner 88 percent market share in festive sales: Report

Online shopping platforms Flipkart and Amazon swallowed around 88 percent market share together this festive season which began mid-October and ended mid-November. Reportedly, the two e-commerce giants recorded a combined sale of $7.3 billion during the month-long festive season, according to a report by RedSeer published on 26 November. Flipkart Group comprised 66 percent of the overall GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) clocked by e-commerce firms in the festive season while Amazon comprised 34 percent. Walmart backed Flipkart including fashion portal Myntra took 58 percent of the market share as compared to their competitors Amazon who took a 30 percent share of the festive market sales.

This year’s festive sales also saw 88 percent customer growth from last year. Last year, close to 47 million shoppers bought from e-commerce during festive season sales. This was mainly due to two reasons. One, the influx of new customers and the second, decline in offline shopping due to the pandemic.

“This has been much more than the forecasted performance. The overall growth story has been very bullish this festive season. We had forecasted $7 billion of sales but the actual figures surpassed our expectations, showing how comfortable consumers have become with shopping online even in this pandemic hit year,” said Mrigank Gutgutia, Director E-commerce, RedSeer Consulting.

“One clear lesson from this festive season is that e-commerce has become more mainstream than ever. And it has proven that with the right assortment at the right prices which is delivered quickly in the safety of customer’s homes – the value proposition of e-commerce is very powerful. Thus, it is imperative for brands and sellers to shift their focus to online quickly and enable a seamless online experience for the customer in order to thrive in a post COVID world,” further said.

A representative for Amazon said, “we cannot comment on speculative reports without transparent methodology,” in an emailed response to ET’s queries on RedSeer’s estimates on the market shares of the two online majors. Flipkart declined to comment.