When Alvarez and Marshall (India) and CII Institute of Logistics prepared a report claiming that the e-commerce retail market, which stood at USD 30 billion in 2019, is expected to cross the USD 100-billion mark by 2024, driven by an increasing set of suppliers selling online and change in buying behaviour of consumers, among others, people were flummoxed.
According to the white paper, titled 'Enabling the next wave of e-commerce in India through supply chain innovation', some of the key evolving models for e-commerce include order to store for apparel; dark store for FMCG/ grocery and meat/pharmaceuticals; store to customer deliveries for FMCG grocery and omnichannel presence for retailers.
Many critics felt that although Covid-19 has greatly pushed e-commerce acceptance and demand, the 100-billion figure is still far-fetched.
Yet companies have openly accepted this new norm.
Let us talk about our favourite sale of the year, The Great India Festival Sale.
Amazon India on Sunday said it has enabled over one lakh local shops, kiranas and neighbourhood stores across the country through its various initiatives, a move that will help serve more customers this festive season. More than 20,000 offline retailers, kiranas and local shops from "Local Shops on Amazon" programme will participate in "Great Indian Festival" for the first time, selling various items like daily essentials, large appliances and home decor products, a statement said.
That’s wonderful isn’t it? But there’s more good news. Discounts!
Ecommerce platforms could offer a flurry of discounts this festive season, as sellers and manufacturers look to liquidate high levels of inventory, according to industry executives.
The rebates could be mainly in categories such as fashion, small electronics, appliances, personal care products and toys, they said.
Slow offline sales and shifting consumer preferences have deterred many traders and manufacturers from clearing stocks even six months after India went into a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the Covid-19 outbreak.
But even Flipkart is not behind.
Recently, Walmart-owned Flipkart said it has on boarded more than 50,000 kirana shops to strengthen its supply chain and delivery capabilities ahead of the upcoming festive season.
With this, Flipkart has significantly expanded its kirana onboarding programme to make deliveries to customers in more than 850 cities, it had said. E-commerce companies see a large chunk of their business coming in during the festive sales and they make significant investments ahead of time to ramp up their capacity to be able to handle the spike in orders.
Flipkart even went a step ahead and partnered with Max Fashion. The partnership with Flipkart enables Max to further democratize fashion by enabling the brand to reach out to a wider array of shoppers through Flipkart’s reach in smaller towns and cities. This partnership is also aligned to Flipkart’s priority to continuously expand its fashion portfolio and make latest trends accessible to consumers across the country.
Now in an industry showing fast growth and lots of potential, how can Mukesh Ambani not set foot?
Reliance Industries on 1st October announced two more investments from US funds totalling ₹5,500 crore in Reliance Retail Ventures, the holding company of India’s largest retailer.
The deals reinforce RIL as India’s hottest investment destination for global bigwigs.
Needless to say, this year the customer is going to profit off the competition among these market-players. So set your wishlists, and get your cards ready, because this Diwali, the sale is going to be lit.
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