With 60% growth in new sellers, Amazon India preps for month-long festive sale – Times of India

BENGALURU: Amazon India has seen a 60-80% increase in new seller registrations as compared to February, as more small businesses and traders look to come online with the growing adoption of e-commerce, said company VP Manish Tiwary.
The local arm of the US-based e-tailer now has 6.5 lakh merchants on its platform before it starts festive sales on October 17, up from 5 lakh during the sale last year. For Amazon’s Prime subscribers, the festive sale will open a day before.
Typically, e-tailers like Amazon India hold three major sale events in the festive month with the first sale event being the flagship with most incentives and discounts. For 2020, Amazon hasn’t set any such date and the sales will go on for a month. Tiwary said, based on August numbers, the company is much ahead of where it typically stays during this period and that indicates a ‘much better’ festive season trend this year compared to previous years.
“We are seeing customer behaviour on both ends. We have Prime members — who are shopping in higher frequency and in a larger number of categories, grocery is the best example of that. Even in our other services like Amazon Pay, streaming (Prime Video), we are seeing far higher engagement. If I look at August and parts of September, the new customer acquisition has gone well ahead of what we do during business-as-usual,” Tiwary said.
According to a survey conducted by Neilsen among Amazon merchants, more than 74% are optimistic about the recovery of business during the upcoming sale, when e-commerce sales continue to grow with more consumers shopping online.
According to Tiwary, the growth in seller numbers and opening of 10 new fulfillment centres — a total of 60 now — indicates the growth it expects in the upcoming sale season. Amazon now has 65% of its sellers from non-metro cities in India. Market research firm Redseer has predicted record gross sales of $7 billion online during festive month, which includes Walmart-owned Flipkart and others.