Devina Joshi, Ankita Rai & Sonali Chowdhury, Business Standard New Delhi , 20 October 2014 Monday, October 6, 2014, was supposed to be India's answer to America's 'Cyber Monday'. It was the day Indian e-tailing giant Flipkart unleashed its Big Billion Day sale, promising unthinkably deep discounts across a host of categories. The day ended up making history for all the wrong reasons - the website's server crashed frequently, there were complaints of fraudulent pricing, stocks ran out within seconds of the sale launch, there were payment and delivery glitches, and to top it all, an unsatisfactory response mechanism from…
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Sagar Malviya, The Economic Times Mumbai, 13 October 2014 The world's largest online store Amazon and India's largest listed retailer Future Group have signed a deal to jointly sell goods over the Internet amid growing friction between online and offline retailers over heavy discounting. Future Group will sell more than 45 own labels of apparel initially, followed by in-house brands in the home, electronics and food categories, while the US-headquartered company will handle order fulfillment and customer service for the merchandise on its portal. Both firms will also develop a new line of products across categories to be exclusively sold…
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Parimala S. Rao, Catalyst (The Hindu Businessline) Chennai, 9 October 2014 “Amma, can we whatsapp the photo to Pramod in Dubai?” asks the youngster excitedly, after his mum has taken a picture of him in front of a towering grey-and-yellow model of a Transformer. She nods, and he grins happily, proud that he can show off his very own bit of high-end retail to a friend in the Gulf. It’s this spirit that seems to imbue the hordes of shoppers and visitors to Kochi’s retail mecca – LuLu Mall. Opened just over a year ago, the complex covers a sprawling…
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Shruti Chakraborty, Quartz India Mumbai, 6 October 2014 The fireworks began much before the festival, when India’s e-commerce giants rolled out glittering advertising campaigns, reportedly spending some Rs200 crore, last month. That’s a small indicator of the big prize that India’s shopping websites including Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon are fighting for—the massive bump in sales in the festive season surrounding Diwali (October 23). Without dominating this season, no website can hope to lead the all-out war this sector has come to resemble. For smaller sites, this month alone can account for a third of their annual sales. And with every…
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Avinash Bhat, The New Indian Express Bangalore, 6 October 2014 As Diwali approaches, brick-and-mortar retailers are scrambling to compete with online websites offering hefty discounts to woo shoppers. Offers like one-plus-one and 50% discounts are becoming the norm across shops. This week, major online retailers like Snapdeal, Flipkart, Jabong and Amazon announced campaigns to target festival shoppers. Realising the need to compete, physical retailers are also offering huge discounts. The online market in India has been growing at a dizzying pace, and attracting huge investments. In 2014 alone, Flipkart raised $1 billion in funds while Amazon announced plans to invest…
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