Flipkart’s plan for a smooth Big Billion Day sale
NEW DELHI: Learning from last year’s glitches, Flipkart is taking no chances this time and has geared up to make its Big Billion Day’s sale starting next week hassle-free through upgrades in technology, logistics and the seller base. “We are ramping up our logistics and during the festive season we will have over 19,000 delivery boys, including those from Ekart, delivering to over 20,000 pin codes across India,” said Ankit Nagori, chief business officer at Flipkart.
The company is adding three warehouses including one at Dadri near New Delhi. Ekart is the company’s own logistics arm. This time, the sale will be of a longer duration and restricted to the app. “On an average, we get about 75% of our traffic through mobile-only devices. We expect it to peak during the discount sale to over 80%,” said Nagori.
“We have invested heavily in our chat application Ping and image-based search to improve the shopping experience,” said Nagori, who joined the eight-year-old company in 2010. This year the sale will be conducted for five days, starting October 13. It will include Myntra, the online fashion retailer Flipkart acquired last year.
As per ET’s estimates, India’s biggest ecommerce companies such as Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal and Quikr are expected to spend over Rs 2,000 crore this year on marketing and advertising, a 53% jump from last year. Nagori declined to comment on Flipkart’s marketing budget for the October to December period. “There will be a multi-channel approach with TV, print, outdoor and digital and this time we will specifically target tier-2 towns with our offline campaign,” he added.
While product launches in categories such as electronics, appliances and mobiles are expected, throwaway sales such as mobile phones for Re 1 that were offered last year may not be available this time around. “Rather than the marketing deals (such Re 1 sales), we will offer significant number of products at a lower price to a larger base of customers,” Nagori said.
Last year, sellers were sent deactivation mails after the supply chain ran out of capacity. This year the company is asking sellers to stock a large number of goods in its fulfillment centres. About 40,000 retailer are expected to sell through Flipkart during the sale. The company has launched a ‘turbocharge’ campaign to add 10,000 sellers in the next three months, through which it will offer free cataloging and listing support.
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Source:Timesofindia
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