Today will see the end of the big Amazon India promo event of the year, the six day sale event billed as The Great Indian Festival. In advance of the festive Diwali season, it’s rather like a Prime Day or Black Friday event. Deals and discounts are offered feverishly to festive shoppers.
One of the perks for Amazon India Prime members was early access to the discounts and deals. The head of Amazon India said of the success of the event so far:
We opened up prime early access for 12 hours. In the last 10-10.5 hours prime early access was already two times of what it was last year so we have seen people shop 100 percent more than they shopped last year. We are particularly excited by the three times higher new customer and Prime sign ups. Amazon remains the most visited, most transacted, most trusted online marketplace in India. We look forward to maintaining this momentum for the rest of the holiday season.
– Amit Agarwal, Amazon India
As we reported recently, Walmart-owned Flipkart too is holding a big promo event in India called Big Billion Day that looks much Amazon’s event: deep discounts, lots of deal and promotions and a stack additional marketing activity. Recently Flipkart chief Kalyan Krishnamurthy is reported as saying Amazon is becoming “less relevant” in India
The two are now increasingly locked in a titanic struggle to get as much of the ecommerce market in the second biggest economy in the world. Saying of the battle, Amazon’s Agarwal explained:
The stakes are high for us every single day. From our perspective trust is very easily lost, hard to earn. So it is not what we do in a five day or 30 days period that backs our future but what we do on a daily basis. We will leave the debate of who is bigger aside. For us what matters is building the next cent of very loyal customers that fuel the next five years of growth
– Amit Agarwal, Amazon India
