Amazon sales showdown

Amazon flagship annual sale, the Great Indian Festival, will be held around the same time as Flipkart’s online discount sale, Big Billion Days

Bengaluru: The Indian unit of Amazon.com Inc. is preparing to launch its flagship annual sale later this month and is pulling out all stops to overtake arch rival Flipkart.

Amazon India could find competing with and besting Flipkart a tough challenge given the latter’s position as one of the most well-funded start-ups in the world after it raised $3 billion this year.

Flipkart plans to hold its flagship Big Billion Days (BBD) sale from 20 to 24 September. Amazon India did not reveal the dates for this year’s Great Indian Festival, but according to an executive familiar with the company’s plans, Amazon is expected to hold the sale around the same time.

In an interview on Friday, Amazon India chief Amit Agarwal said the company had ramped up its capabilities since last year’s Diwali season sale, adding that its American parent will continue to invest heavily in India in the near term and help expand the online retail market in the country.

“We are pretty confident that this will be our biggest shopping season ever...in our four-year history (in India). At a high level if I compare this year’s Great Indian Festival with last year, we’ve added more than 80 million products and grown selection two times. It’s like adding one whole Amazon in the last one year for our customers,” said Agarwal, who was elevated to the rank of senior vice-president at Amazon.com earlier this year.

The Diwali season clash between Amazon and Flipkart is expected to be as hard fought as last year. The competition between Flipkart and Amazon grew so intense last year that both companies even resorted to a bitter war of words.

In October last year, Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal had taken a swipe at Amazon, saying that the American e-commerce giant had misjudged customers’ needs during the festive season sale by focusing on the sale of groceries, which helped inflate Amazon India’s sales numbers. A few days later, in an interview with Mint, Agarwal responded to the put-down by saying Amazon had accomplished in three years what Flipkart hadn’t despite launching much earlier and acquiring several companies including Myntra and Jabong.

This year, however, the online retail landscape looks vastly different with the Indian e-commerce battle effectively having become a two-horse race between Amazon and Flipkart, following the rapid disintegration of Snapdeal.