With Covid-19 accelerating digital adoption and traditional offline shoppers moving online, the holiday season is expected to see an increase of more than 70% in consumers with 45-50 million digital shoppers. Of these, more than 50% are likely to come from Tier II cities and beyond, Redseer estimates. The entire holiday month is expected to post gross sales of $ 7 billion in 2020 versus nearly $ 4 billion last year, a jump of 75%.
The highly publicized sales date has yet to be announced, but e-retailers have started working with brands, marketers, and logistics players in the run-up to the event, probably next month. Industry executives are also working with vendors and brands to overcome investment and supply chain issues to meet increased demand.
“Technically, what demonetization did to the payments space, Covid-19 has almost done to the e-commerce space. We expect a greater number of shipments than we are currently seeing. At peak time, it should be 7.5 to 8 million shipments a day. We have already planned for the season and now it will be rolled out, ”said TA Krishnan, co-founder and CEO of E Com Express, a third-party logistics company serving online platforms. According to him, the industry currently ships between 5 and 5.5 million items a day.
Last year, average shipments during the festival season were less than 5 million.
According to industry sources, groceries, consumer goods and merchandise in general will generate higher volumes due to the demand induced by Covid. Typically, smartphones, electronics, appliances large and small, and fashion dominate Diwali sales.
“The estimates are very realistic. There is significantly higher adoption of digital in non-metropolitan cities. In terms of consumer behavior during the pre-Covid-19 era, we had seen some increase in penetration online, but this is the first time that there has been a sustained and significant move to digital, with penetration increasing of e-commerce 5% compared to 3% last year, ”said Ujjwal Chaudhry, Associate Partner at Redseer.
This year’s sales are also likely to come when there are signs of a gradual economic recovery compared to last year, when overheads were down due to the more widespread slowdown in the economy, Chaudhry added.
“I am diversifying into new categories like handicrafts, Diwali lights as there are supply problems in segments like electronic accessories,” said a Delhi-based online marketer. Emails sent to Flipkart and Amazon India did not get any response.
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