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India’s\ntwo largest e-commerce players are looking to use the country’s biggest\nfestive sales season this week to bolster their valuations as they seek\nfresh capital and look to fend off Amazon’s growing inroads into the\ndomestic market.For India’s Flipkart and Snapdeal, strong sales\nduring India’s equivalent of the U.S. Black Friday sales could give\nboth companies some leverage in their current push for investment.
With\nprivate equity money flows drying up and Amazon.com pledging $5 billion\ninvestment to gain ground in India, local e-commerce vendors will be\nlooking to use this season’s numbers to show investors their ability to\ndrive sales.
Flipkart is currently in talks with retail giant\nWal-Mart Stores and a strong showing of sales during this week could\ngive it more negotiating leverage. Snapdeal is also preparing to raise\nfresh capital to defend its turf.
The high stakes battle between\nFlipkart’s Big Billion Day sales bonanza, Amazon’s Great Indian\nFestival sale and Snapdeal’s own initiative dubbed the Unbox Diwali\nSale, means employees at all three players are working marathon hours\nto meet stiff sales targets.
“Our teams are working around the\nclock during Big Billion Days,” said a spokesperson for Flipkart,\nadding that many are camping out in office for the week, and working\n14-18 hour days in a bid to keep up with frenzied demand.
All\nthree companies say their sales seasons have so far been successful,\nbut did not comment on how the sales momentum is stacking up against\ntheir own internal targets.
Flipkart says it sold 2.25 million units in the first 12 hours of its 5-day sale, which kicked off on Sunday.
Its\nclosest competitor Amazon India said it sold 1.5 million units in the\nfirst 12 hours of its sale that began on Saturday. Amazon said its\nfirst day of sales was three times higher than the corresponding first\nday sales last year while second day sales were five times higher.
Snapdeal\nsaid more than 2 million users logged in on the first hour of its\nsales, leading to more than 180 orders per second at launch.
“With\ncompanies under pressure to make money, they don’t want to let the\nopportunity go to a competitor…but you can’t keep burning cash by\noffering huge discounts,” said Devangshu Dutta, chief executive of\nretail consultancy Third Eyesight.<\/span><\/p>\n