While the coronavirus pandemic has affected businesses and consumer retail has also been one of the sectors to face the blues, it is expected that online sales ahead of and during festival season will beat the gloom.
While the coronavirus pandemic has affected businesses and consumer retail has also been one of the sectors to face the blues, it is expected that online sales ahead of and during festival season will beat the gloom. In fact, sales via e-commerce will be even grander than last year, according to a report. “RedSeer anticipates the festive sales for the first event to grow 50% on-year over CY19,” according to RedSeer’s Online Festive Forecast Report 2020. Thanks to the expected strong performance this year, e-commerce sales are likely to touch $38 billion, reporting 40% on-year growth.
“The online festive sale has always been an important indicator of India’s e-commerce growth story and last year’s festive sale was the biggest so far,” the report said. Players such as Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon reported major growth in Bharat sales and most of their growth was driven by tier 2 and tier 3 orders. Items including electronics, apparels, lifestyle, home essentials etc sold the most last year however, due to coronavirus pandemic and a new wave of customers, category mix this year will look different as compared to previous years.
What makes this year’s festive sales different
In 2020, online festive sales are expected to be different from last few years and this year will be ‘festival of firsts’, the report said. For one, Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government has been pushing for manufacturing locally and boosting domestic production. This push for Atma Nirbhar Bharat, coupled with strong nationalist sentiment is expected to impact the brand mix in categories like electronics and mobile. Moreover, coronavirus driven massive online adoption of Bharat customers is likely to reach a tipping point of sorts this year. A new trend is also emerging in shopping models owing to changing customer demographic. This includes video-based and WhatsApp based shopping.
Further, while organized retail is expected to report some recovery, it is not expected to fully rebound by the festive period.