Festive fever may light up ecommerce sales by 16%

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Online sellers, major brands and ecommerce platforms are gearing up for robust sales through the festive season, as the online shopping ecosystem shakes off a relatively muted first half of the year, industry executives said.

Sales in terms of gross merchandise value are likely to be between $9.7 billion and $11 billion this festive season, rising roughly 15-16% from a year earlier, according to data from market research company Datum Intelligence and consulting and research firm 1Lattice.

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Gross merchandise value is the total value of goods sold via ecommerce platforms, calculated prior to the deduction of any fees or expenses.

For marketplaces like Flipkart and Amazon India, the festive season lasts for about a month, typically starting in the second week of October.


Expanding Customer Base

Ecommerce platforms make a significant chunk of their yearly gross sales in this period, with some categories like large appliances generating as much as a third of their annual income from festive sales.

On Thursday, Amazon said it is advancing the start of its headline festive sales, called the Great Indian Festival, to October 8 from the previously announced October 10. The announcement came a few hours after rival Flipkart said its main festive sales, Big Billion Days, will start on October 8.

Other platforms, such as SoftBank-backed Meesho and