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Flipkart, Amazon of India, has sales of $100M in one day

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Re: Flipkart, Amazon of India, has sales of $100M in one day

#31

Post by Sven7 »

appreneur wrote: post #10

As we more westernised in our outlook, bigbillionday is something similar to "Black Friday" and deep discount on single day ....might do more for overall internet penetration....currently only 25% of Indians have access to Internet, which stands at 243 million , if this crosses to 340 million, That's a huge market growth of Internet users ...this will in the long term benefit everybody.....perhaps remove poverty of m…

Indeed, getting Indians to move from buying gold for no good reason to buying garbage for no good reason = progress to first world status.

Re: Flipkart, Amazon of India, has sales of $100M in one day

#32

Post by avemuri »

suprgeek wrote: post #3

This article has a few details on why this week was important for e-commerce sites in India: http://qz.com/274278/the-real-reason-why-indias-shopping-web... The incumbents from Silicon Valley may not have the Cultural understanding of the Indian market and the barriers to utilizing Large scale distributed technology platforms have never been lower. I boldly (and somewhat foolishly) predict that as more and more India…

I've been a 11 year customer of Amazon US and a 2 year customer at Amazon.in. They certainly do get Indian culture. Amazon India isn't a bunch of white people from Seattle arriving en masse and setting up shop. They hired locally (including from Indian incumbents) and localized their operations to include stuff like COD, local language support etc. Amazon is well on its way to becoming as 'local' as McDonalds or Honda have already. Their capability to deliver in Tier II and III cities is already ahead of Flipkart for example. GMV is currently about 35% of Flipkart and I wouldn't be surprised if they overtook them in two years.

Re: Flipkart, Amazon of India, has sales of $100M in one day

#33

Post by denzil_correa »

bgdam wrote: post #2

Most of the offers were sold out within seconds of the sale start, the servers kept crashing intermittently, items mysteriously disappeared from the cart just before payment, prices shown on the product page were silently increased when added to the cart, and to top it all off people managed to get screenshots of prices being raised to near 200% before a discount was applied and the items were sold for higher than no…

> Reports are now coming in that most people who managed to actually buy something at bargain prices had their orders cancelled by Flipkart.

I can confirm this from multiple sources. The orders were cancelled citing "allowing other customers a fair opportunity" . Some people are mulling over legal options including a litigation to regulate such e-commerce malpractices.

Re: Flipkart, Amazon of India, has sales of $100M in one day

#34

Post by denzil_correa »

For readers who aren't from India and wondering about the "festive season", the Indian festive season is different from US. The festive season is generally considered the period between two festivals Dussehra (triumph of good over evil) [0] and Diwali (festival of lights) [1]. In 2014, the Dussehra and Diwali fall on 4th October and 23rd October, respectively.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vijayadashami

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diwali

Re: Flipkart, Amazon of India, has sales of $100M in one day

#35

Post by balladeer »

hrjet wrote: post #17
balladeer wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They actually were deliberately tricking the customers. They are known for doing this. Actually Amazon.in is hitting them hard with excellent and transparent pricing, great customer service (at least from Indian standards) and that is making them desperate. Source: I've been a customer for years and have been watching them closely :-)

I have seen Amazon.in silently adding prices during checkout (deliberate or not I can't say ofcourse). I haven't experienced Flipkart adding prices during checkout, but the prices do fluctuate while browsing over the span of a day.

I would only be able to say we have had different experiences. But in my case Amazon changes prices only after I leave the item in cart for days. And sometimes the change is +ve, sometimes -ve.

With Flipkart it feels like I am in a pricing-availability labyrinth.

Re: Flipkart, Amazon of India, has sales of $100M in one day

#36

Post by balladeer »

amrrs wrote: post #16
balladeer wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They actually were deliberately tricking the customers. They are known for doing this. Actually Amazon.in is hitting them hard with excellent and transparent pricing, great customer service (at least from Indian standards) and that is making them desperate. Source: I've been a customer for years and have been watching them closely :-)

And though users are frustrated, they've tasted this huge volume success with Xiaomi so it doesn't take much for them to repeat the same #FlashSale across their product category.

Exactly. Initially I thought Xiaomi/Flipkart were genuinely selling whatever phones they could make for India. But when the numbers started to come in then I realise, shit it was just marketing gimmick.

Re: Flipkart, Amazon of India, has sales of $100M in one day

#37

Post by rikacomet »

amitutk wrote: post #7

To put that in perspective, if Flipkart has sales of $100M every day of the year, at $36.5 billion, it would be half of Amazon's e-commerce revenue of $67.9 billion [0]. [0] http://mashable.com/2014/05/08/amazon-sales-chart/

also, Amazon is available in lot of countries, whereas Flipkart is essentially India only. Over that, there is the currency and per capita differences.

Re: Flipkart, Amazon of India, has sales of $100M in one day

#38

Post by rasz_pl »

Sven7 wrote: post #27
bgdam wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do agree that server crashes and products disappearing from the cart might be technical issues, they weren't able to handle (either from incompetence or other reasons). But, if you go through my links, you will see that they were indeed deliberately tricking customers. Price tracking websites show that most Flipkart on-sale products' prices were hiked to double their original pricing and then discounts were applied…

All the negative stories and tweets in the world won't make a difference. Their prices(that only they can offer at the scale they operate at) and marketing budget will nullify it as Walmart and Amazon have already proven in the past.

except those stories tell you those prices are FICTION and your order will get cancelled

Re: Flipkart, Amazon of India, has sales of $100M in one day

#39

Post by chdir »

denzil_correa wrote: post #33
bgdam wrote: post #2

Most of the offers were sold out within seconds of the sale start, the servers kept crashing intermittently, items mysteriously disappeared from the cart just before payment, prices shown on the product page were silently increased when added to the cart, and to top it all off people managed to get screenshots of prices being raised to near 200% before a discount was applied and the items were sold for higher than no…

> Reports are now coming in that most people who managed to actually buy something at bargain prices had their orders cancelled by Flipkart. I can confirm this from multiple sources. The orders were cancelled citing "allowing other customers a fair opportunity" . Some people are mulling over legal options including a litigation to regulate such e-commerce malpractices.

> Some people are mulling over legal options including a litigation to regulate such e-commerce malpractices

Much needed. About time there's some regulation & transparency on pricing & discounts. E-commerce companies need to respect the meaning of MRP (Maximum Retail Price). The #BigFoolingSales need to have the fine print spelled out properly. Ebay India pulls the same crap multiple times a year. There are 3rd party sellers like cart2india that list stuff at waay more than the printed price and then offer huge discounts, still charging you more than what you'd pay at a brick & mortar store.

Re: Flipkart, Amazon of India, has sales of $100M in one day

#40

Post by bgdam »

Sven7 wrote: post #27
bgdam wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do agree that server crashes and products disappearing from the cart might be technical issues, they weren't able to handle (either from incompetence or other reasons). But, if you go through my links, you will see that they were indeed deliberately tricking customers. Price tracking websites show that most Flipkart on-sale products' prices were hiked to double their original pricing and then discounts were applied…

All the negative stories and tweets in the world won't make a difference. Their prices(that only they can offer at the scale they operate at) and marketing budget will nullify it as Walmart and Amazon have already proven in the past.

This would be true if Flipkart did not have viable competitors. This is most definitely not the case. Snapdeal is another Indian e-tailer and the global e-commerce juggernaut Amazon also has an Indian site, both of which offer cheaper prices than Flipkart on a vast majority of items.

When I can get the same product for nearly the same price from Amazon, Snapdeal and Flipkart, why should I go with Flipkart (in light of the negative stories)?

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