Amazon Great Indian Festival to start from October 3

Amazon, following in Flipkart’s footsteps, has now announced that the start of its Great Indian Festival will be from October 3. While Flipkart’s The Big Billion Days sale is an eight-day event, Amazon India’s GIF will be a month-long affair.

An Amazon spokesperson said the company’s top priority remains customer trust and the interest of the sellers, especially the lakhs of small sellers and the tens of thousands of local shop owners across India. “We continue to innovate for our partners, small businesses and customers, as they gear up for the upcoming festive season.”

The spokesperson said the Amazon GIF will now start from October 3, 2021 and Prime members will have early access. The company will share further details on the specifics of Prime Early Access soon.

On Friday, Amazon had announced that it will host its month-long festive season sale (GIF) from October 4. And earlier in the week, Flipkart had said the eighth edition of the TBBD will be held from October 7-12 this year. But on Saturday, the Walmart-owned company advanced the opening date to October 3, set to end on October 10.

In the past too, the two companies have gone head-to-head during the festive season with their sale events, offering great deals, new launches and attractive affordability options like EMI offers via various partnerships. They line up new launches and offers to woo shoppers during the festive season, holding multiple sale events that are timed around Dussehra and Diwali.

Players see a large chunk of their annual business coming in during the festive sales and they , a make significant investments ahead of time to ramp up their capacity and add features to be able to handle the spike in orders, while ensuring a smooth experience for shoppers and sellers. According to consulting firm RedSeer, e-commerce platforms are expected to potentially clock over USD 9 billion gross GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) during the festive season this year as against USD 7.4 billion last year, a growth of 23%.

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During the first week of the festive season, these platforms are expected to register 30% year-on-year growth in gross GMV to USD 4.8 billion. GMV refers to the total value of goods sold on the platform prior to subtracting cancellation or return.