Sellers on Amazon.in sold more than twice as many units in the first 24 hours of this year’s Great Indian Festival as in the same 24 hours of last year’s sale. Beauty sellers sold nearly seven times as many.
Amazon published these figures on 8 October, the day the sale opened to everyone, and added more the next day. They cover only the first 12 to 24 hours. Some compare this year with last year. Others compare a sale day with a normal day, and a sale day always looks big next to a normal one. The sale is still running, so these are not the final results.
Even so, these early numbers tell sellers a lot about who is shopping this year and what they are buying. Below, we go through what they mean for your listings and your stock before Diwali. We also checked a claim that has been going round this week: that Blinkit and Instamart did better in the sale than Amazon.
All the Amazon figures here come from Amazon’s own announcement. Some graphics shared on social media show numbers that are not in it, so check the source before you make plans based on a number.
Most shoppers came from outside the big cities
Amazon says more than 72% of visits in the first days came from outside India’s nine biggest cities. The number of people who bought on Amazon.in for the first time nearly doubled. And within the first 12 hours, Amazon had an order from every pin code in India.
Think of one of these new buyers. She lives in Hisar, and she is buying a washing machine online for the first time, on her phone. Nobody she knows owns the brand she is looking at, and there is no shopkeeper to ask. She learns everything about the machine from the listing.
So the listing has to answer her questions before she asks them. Will it fit in the space she has? How much water does it use? What does the warranty cover? Who installs it, and when? On a phone, the photos fill most of the screen, so put the answers in the photos first, and then in the A+ section below them.
A listing that only makes sense to people who already know the brand will lose many of these new buyers. They will simply open the next listing.
Twice as many units, and stock runs out faster
Beauty was not the only category that grew faster than the average. Compared with the first 24 hours of last year’s sale, kitchen sold 4.2 times as many units, wireless (phones and their accessories) 3.4 times, apparel 3.1 times and home 2.7 times. The number of sellers who sold more than ₹1 crore in the first 24 hours went up by over 80%.
Beauty stands out in another way too. Amazon says one in every four products bought on Amazon.in in the first 12 hours was a beauty product. If you sell skincare, haircare or make-up, plan your stock and ads for these weeks as the biggest of your year.
When units double, stock runs out faster. A product that runs out stops selling, and it can slip down the search results while it is out of stock. Check stock every morning, for every size and colour, and pause ads on anything that is about to run out. Our daily sale checklist has the full list of checks.
The festive season isn’t over. Diwali is on 8 November. If your stock in Amazon’s warehouses is running low, send more this week. Amazon’s warehouses are busy at this time of year, so new stock can take longer than usual to go on sale.
More than 1 in 3 shoppers paid with EMI
More than one in three customers chose EMI, Amazon says. On Amazon Pay Later, the number of EMI payments doubled, and the number of people using Pay Later went up by 80%.
Shoppers also bought bigger and more expensive things. Premium Android phones sold 70% more than last year. TVs of 55 inches and above made up 65% of all TVs sold. Front-load washing machines of 9 kg and above sold 80 times as many as on a normal day, and refrigerators 60 times.
Our buyer in Hisar fits this pattern. The listing shows her the EMI as a monthly amount under the price, and that makes the bigger machine easier to choose. But when you pay every month for a year, you want to be sure before you buy. She will read more and compare more. That is where the A+ section of a listing does its work. It can show the drum, the wash programmes, the energy rating and the installation in pictures, before she has to ask. You can see real A+ pages we have designed, for washing machines and more, on our A+ content page.
If you sell anything that costs more than a few thousand rupees, open your listing on a phone, the way a buyer would. Check that the EMI line shows under the price, and that any bank offer or no-cost EMI you signed up for is showing. If something is missing, raise it with Seller Support today, not after the sale.
Delivery in minutes is now part of Amazon
Amazon Now is Amazon’s own quick-delivery service. In the more than 120 cities where it runs, Amazon says one in every two products was delivered in minutes.
Flipkart has its own service, Flipkart Minutes. Redseer, a research firm, estimates that shoppers spent about ₹24,000 crore on shopping sites in the first two days of the festive sales. It says the quick-delivery services of Amazon and Flipkart sold 4 to 5 times as much as on an average day.
So fast delivery now matters on Amazon too, not only on Blinkit or Zepto. If a shopper can get one product in minutes and yours in four days, many will choose the faster one. Our article on Amazon Now explains what brands should fix first to sell there.
Did Blinkit and Instamart sell more?
This week, some people have said that Blinkit and Instamart did better in the festive sale than Amazon. We looked for the numbers behind the claim.
As of 14 October, we could not find any sales figures for these weeks from Blinkit, Swiggy Instamart or Zepto. Without their numbers, nobody outside these companies can say whether they sold more than Amazon, or less.
What we did find are forecasts, made before the season began. A report by Google and Redseer, reported by BW Marketing World, expects quick commerce to take nearly 18% of festive online spending this year, up from about 11% last year. It expects festive sales on quick commerce to grow by 110 to 120%, while the rest of online shopping grows by 16 to 18%. Datum Intelligence, another research firm, expects quick commerce’s share to be about 16%.
So one part of the claim may turn out to be true. Quick commerce is expected to grow much faster than the rest of online shopping. But it is growing from a much smaller base. Even in the higher forecast, more than four out of every five rupees spent online this festive season will go to regular online shopping, not to quick commerce. Growing faster is not the same as selling more.
Two more facts matter here. First, Amazon and Flipkart now run quick commerce too, through Amazon Now and Flipkart Minutes. So the choice is no longer between Blinkit and Amazon. Second, quick commerce is usually busiest in the last few days before Diwali, when people buy sweets, gifts, diyas and lights at the last minute. Those days haven’t come yet.
Blinkit’s parent company, Eternal, and Swiggy, which runs Instamart, report their results every three months. Their figures for October to December will come out early next year. If any of these companies publishes festive numbers before then, we will update this article.
What should a seller do with all this? If you sell things people buy at the last minute, such as sweets, dry fruits, gifts, puja items or beauty products, don’t choose between Amazon and quick commerce. Sell on both, and keep stock on both in the week before Diwali. Our Diwali guide for Blinkit, Zepto and Instamart explains what to fix first, from product photos to stock.
What we would do before Diwali
If we were running your Amazon account this week, we would start with your own numbers. In Seller Central, the Business Reports show visits and orders for each product. We would find the products with the most visits and the fewest orders. Those listings are losing the new buyers.
For each of those products, we would open the listing on a phone, as a first-time buyer would. Do the photos answer her questions, and does the A+ section show why the product is worth its price? If a listing needs new photos or a new A+ section, we would change one listing at a time, and check each change once it is live. During a sale, a mistake can cost orders every hour.
Then we would check stock for every size and colour, and move ad money away from anything that is about to run out.
This is the work we do for brands on Amazon, from photos and A+ pages to ads and daily checks during a sale. If you would like us to look at your listings before Diwali, talk to us.
