Cyber Shopping: Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon shower discounts

Shoppers are making a mad rush to e-commerce sites to lap up goods- ranging from apparel to electronics at cheap prices-due to hefty discounts being offered by e-tailers this festive season.

Leading e-tailer Flipkart said on Tuesday that it sold 10 lakh products in the first 10 hours of the 'Big Billion Days' first day festive sale with 6 million visits from across the nation and 25 items sold per second. Bangalore, Delhi and Chennai have emerged as the chart toppers in terms of visits from metro cities, and Ludhiana, Lucknow and Bhopal from the non-metro cities, Flipkart said in a statement.

A price war has broken out in the cyber space as leading e-tailers Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon are showering discounts to woo buyers this festive season and ramp up their market shares.

Smaller e-tailers like ShopClues.com have also joined the festive discount week. Flipkart launched its sale a day after arch-rival Snapdeal's and will stretch through to Saturday.

Snapdeal said that its Electronics Monday Sale has exceeded its expectation with the sales revenue recording an increase of 17x by Monday evening. Rahul Taneja, vice-president, Snapdeal said, "We are well on track to reach $100 million sales on our Electronics Monday Sale." The trends indicate a 10X growth in orders, 17X rise in sales with 5x growth in customers who shopped, he added. In the large appliances category, air con-ditioners and washing machines were the top-selling products while in the home appliances category, geysers were the highest selling product, he further added. In the mobile phone category, brands like Xiaomi , Micromax , Yu, Samsung and Apple were the most popular.

Flipkart said that footwear, men's clothing and accessories have been the top-selling categories during this fashion sale so far with men's product categories witnessing a huge spike in demand as compared to other fashion categories, it added. "We have sold 1 million units already and expect to do a higher number by the end of today's fashion sale. We have had 1.6 million app installs in the last two days," Mukesh Bansal, head of e-commerce platform, Flipkart, said.

Nitin Kochhar of ShopClues.com said, "We are experiencing almost a festive frenzy, gross merchandise value peak run rates have shot up to 4x (almost 2.5 - 3lakh units expected to be sold on Day One) spiking up the orders to around five times our normal days."

Big Billion offers discounts ranging from 50-80 per cent on fashion goods. The e-tailer is offering a minimum 65 per cent off on Puma sports shoes and a flat 35 per cent discount on Rayban sunglasses.

The price of a Philips hair straightener has been slashed from Rs 1,245 to Rs 849 while that of set of two double bed sheets with pillow covers has been reduced to a third from Rs 1,599 to Rs 549. Flipkart plans to extend the Big Billion offer to home and appliances goods for a four-day sale from Wednesday followed by a three-day discounts on mobile phones on Thursday, a two-day offer for electronics and automotive goods on Friday and offer on books and other products on the last day on Saturday.

(In association with Mail Today)