Facing Covid-19 woes, the e-commerce giants Flipkart and Amazon plan to skip this year's mega pre-Diwali sales programs. The two e-commerce companies have already activated plan B, which is likely to be more low-key sales events.
Walmart-owned Flipkart's ‘Big Billion Day' and Amazon's ‘Great Indian Festival', are the annual discounting events close to Diwali. The sales on the platform are known for generating immense consumer interests despite brick-and-mortar stores and small traders alleging that the companies flout rules by offering deep discounting on a host of products.
After India saw the deadly second wave of Covid-19 surge in April and May, the focus has gone back to speed up the vaccination drive. Experts believe that if the vaccination is not pushed and stringent measures are not put in place then the country may face a third wave of infections in September or October this year.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Amazon India said, “We continue to focus to serve our customers through home deliveries in a safe and convenient manner, and also support lakhs of sellers, including small and medium businesses, associates across our network.”
As per earlier Big Billion Day and Great Indian Festival sales data the e-commerce platforms around Diwali last year raked in about $3.1 billion in the first four and a half days of the festive period, exceeding the $2.7 billion in gross sales recorded during the entire event period in 2019.
In the 2020 edition of Big Billion Day, Flipkart had said its first five-day deliveries had swelled 10 times from the previous years to nearly 10 million shipments.
