Amazon claims 70,000 sellers sold to non-metros this festive season

By Tarush Bhalla

  • 31 Oct 2021
Credit: Reuters

E-commerce major Amazon India on Sunday said that close to 70% of sellers on its platform sold to customers in non-metro cities during its month-long Great Indian Festival sales starting October 2.  

Almost 79% of new customers on the platform came from smaller towns and cities such as Ernakulam, Guntur, Krishna, Godavari, the e-commerce major added.  

Further, close to 30,000 of sellers on the platform sold gross merchandise value (GMV) worth lakhs on its platform, according to Amazon.    

“We are truly humbled to see how this festive season has brought joy to lakhs of sellers on Amazon.in with many becoming lakhpatis and crorepatis. We also witnessed great participation from over 360,000 micro and small enterprise buyers on Amazon Business this festive season. We take pride in being a part of their growth journey while enabling them to get back on track,” said Manish Tiwary, vice president, Amazon India.

Amazon said its sellers part of its ‘Local Shops’ programme registered almost two-fold growth this festive sale.  Amazon’s ‘Local Shop’ programme was launched in April last year, which allowed kiranas as well as offline retailers to start selling on the e-commerce platform.

Major appliances, kitchen essentials, home entertainment including televisions, furniture, lawn and garden continued to be top selling categories for ‘Local Shops’ on Amazon. 

In terms of category mix, smartphones continued to drive roughly 46% of overall GMV clocked by e-commerce platforms during the first week of e-commerce sales, according to estimates of management consultancy Redseer. 

Amazon on Sunday added that more than 10 lakh customers purchased a smartphone on Amazon.in for the first time.

Mint had earlier reported on October 14 e-commerce companies including Amazon India and Walmart-owned Flipkart clocked gross merchandise value (GMV) of $4.6 billion (roughly ₹32,000 crore) in the first week of festive online sales this year.