Amazon Prime Day – Tier-II Cities Get Sizable Traction, Mobiles Witness 5X Increase In Sale

Amazon hosted its first edition of Amazon Prime Day on July 10-July 11, 2017. It is an exclusive ecommerce sale event for Prime members. During Amazon Prime Day, the ecommerce giant claims that it witnessed sizable traction from Tier-II cities.

In an official statement, the company said that on week leading up to it and Prime Day itself, more customers joined the Prime programme than any one month since the launch of Prime in India in November 2016. Prime membership grew significantly including smaller towns like Alwar, Muktsar, Gulbarga, and Nalgonda.

In July 2016 the company launched Amazon Prime membership program in India. Currently, Prime membership is available at an introductory price of INR 499 year. In India, Prime members enjoy unlimited free 1 day and 2 days free standard delivery without minimum purchase. Apart from this, they get exclusive deals on best-selling products and instant access to latest movies and TV shows.

This year the Amazon Prime Day- the annual sale event – was hosted in 13 countries. The list of countries includes US, UK, Spain, Mexico, Japan, Italy, India, Germany, France, China, Canada, Belgium, and Austria.

Highlights From India’s First Amazon Prime Day

“We are humbled the overwhelming response to our first Prime Day in India. With records set for Prime member sign ups, shopping across categories, streaming of Prime Video and Amazon Pay top ups customers clearly voted for the value and convenience of Amazon Prime,” said Amit Agarwal, SVP and Country Head, Amazon India.

During the 30-hour sale Amazon devices – Kindle and Fire TV Stick – witnessed biggest sales day yet.

The top three bestsellers during the Prime Day sale were – FireTVStick, OnePlus 5 smartphone, and Seagate Expansion 1.5TB Portable External Drive. Users shopped across categories like smartphones, fashion, TVs, home & kitchen, appliances, and pantry.

Vikas Agarwal, General Manager – India, OnePlus said, “We are overwhelmed by the nation-wide response we have received for the OnePlus 5 during the Amazon ‘Prime Day’ sale. Furthermore, Amazon.in played a vital role in the success of the OnePlus 5, which has been clear from the reactions to the phone since its recent launch.”

• Amazon Pay top-ups increased by 17X* over normal days. Apart from this, about 5X* more members paid for their purchases using Amazon Pay Balance.
• Smartphones recorded a 5X* jump in sales. Top-selling brands were OnePlus, Xiaomi, Honor, Motorola, Samsung, and Apple.
• Amazon India’s first original series, Inside Edge was the most streamed title in a single day for Prime Video in India. More members streamed on July 10, than any other day since Prime Video was launched in November 2016.
• Amongst speakers, Bose Soundlink III recorded more sales in 30 hours than it has in the past 3 months on Amazon.in.
• In the camera category, the Canon 1300D saw more sales on the ecommerce marketplace, in the 30 hours of Prime Day than it has in the past 30 days.
• With exclusive launches from brands like Forever 21, ASICS, Lavie, Gap, and Louis Philippe, Amazon Fashion too witnessed major traction. Top performing-brands were ASICS (9X*), Hush Puppies (9X*), US Polo (8X*).
• Sports and fitness saw a 2X* jump, while kitchen appliances saw a 2.5X jump in sales.
• Washing machines saw a 8X spike in sales, This was backed by exclusive launches by IFB, Samsung and also driven by 8X spike in BPL, and 7X* spike in Bosch washing machine. Apart from this on Prime Day, TVs sold 8X more than normal days in 2017.

(X* is the spike versus normal daily performance)

The Escalating Ecommerce War Between Amazon And Flipkart

Earlier in May 2017, consumer electronic brand BPL abruptly ended its three-year partnership with ecommerce retailer Flipkart. The duration of the agreement was till 2018.

At that time, a person familiar with the matter who did not wish to be named said, “BPL was unable to match up in terms of technology and lacked the Smart TV range – a popular customer demand in the TV segment. Limited product portfolio also added to the de-growth. Flipkart’s top performing VU TV(a Flipkart exclusive) has more than 20 TV models as opposed to BPL that only had 5.”

Then reports surfaced that BPL had launched its products on Amazon India to sell large appliances such as TVs, air-conditioners, washing machines and more.

Later in July, post implementation of GST, after almost four years, Flipkart started with large ticket size operations in the state of Bihar and UP. Amazon too is looking to expand and increase its last mile delivery in both UP and Bihar along with Gujarat. The US-based ecommerce giant is further looking to increase delivery of higher value goods in Bihar. The implementation of GST regime has become standardised, thereby easing operations for the ecommerce companies.

In order to counter the Prime Day sale, rival Flipkart also announced an 80% discount sale event on July 12th. The sale was loaded with exclusive smartphone launches. Flipkart offered heavy cuts across product categories on a range of brands including Adidas, Fossil, Hidesign, Sony and Samsung, among others.

The GST for ecommerce marketplace is currently awaiting roll out. With a potential multibillion dollar market at stake, ecommerce players, such as Flipkart and Amazon are going all out to give more discounts to retain their customers be it through Amazon Prime Day, exclusive launches or more.