Online marketplace Flipkart said it will hold its annual shopping festival, Big Billion Day, from 2-6 October, offering deep discounts on a wide range of products including smartphones, fashion brands, televisions and others.
Read: Vendors, not consumers, are centre of e-commerce strategy this festive season
This is the third edition of the Big Billion Day sale, which was first launched by Flipkart in October 2014. Apart from deep discounts, Flipkart has readied a no-cost EMI payment option for high-priced items and product exchange schemes to persuade customers to buy more.
Read: Offline retailers attracting consumers with offers, inventory & marketing
“With a vision to create the best shopping experience and bring India together, we are now in our third edition of The Big Billion Days Sale,” Head, category design organization, Flipkart, Kalyan Krishnamurthy said in an official statement.
“This year, our key focus is to ensure maximum value to our consumers by making quality products affordable and accessible. Great offers and exclusive partnerships will give our customers more options to choose from, and our innovative consumer finance, delivery and installation for large electronics and product exchange programs will only add to the customer delight this festive season,” he added.
Read: No bumper discounts this festive season: Ebay India
This festive season is the most important in recent memory for Indian e-commerce firms. E-commerce players – who in 2014 queered the pitch for brick-and-mortar retailers with the latter witnessing the slowest festive season sales – are struggling to keep up this year majorly because of the e-commerce FDI policy that has banned discounts by these marketplaces.
This, coupled with a funding freeze this year has become a matter of concern for e-commerce players in India.
This year, in order to sail through the challenges, players are betting big on sellers, better products and improving backend and logistics networks.
For instance, Snapdeal and Shopclues are disbursing loans to sellers to enable them to stock up for the Diwali spike. Last week Shopclues – which claims to have half a million merchants on its platform selling 50 million products – announced its plans to disburse Rs 5000 crore worth of loans under its financing initiative capital wings. Of this, Rs 200 crore will be disbursed ahead of this year’s Diwali festival.
The company said that the sellers will be offered working capital loans at low-interest rates and customized solutions for repayment and prepayment of loans.
Mirroring Shopclues, Snapdeal also announced similar plans to disburse collateral free loans worth Rs 1000 crores. The festive season loans would be disbursed through its on-going programme, Capital Assist.
Similarly, Flipkart’s Growth Capital program for sellers has also crossed Rs 125 crore milestone recently. In just a year of its launch, the program has successfully disbursed loans amounting to over Rs 125 crore to more than 800 sellers on its platform.
Offering deep discounts on a wide range of products including smartphones, fashion brands, televisions and others
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