What’s the Story?

Flipkart’s annual flagship shopping event, Big Billion Days, will take place October 16 through 21 this year—amid a blitz of online and offline shopping events from other retailers. This year, the event goes live 24 hours ahead of the festival date exclusively for members of Flipkart Plus—the retailer’s free delivery and early access membership program.

Why It Matters

Big Billion Days coincides with the beginning of the Hindu festival of Navratri, which lasts 10 days and is one of India’s largest religious festivals. The Navratri festive season is considered an auspicious time to make purchases and investments, so consumer propensity to spend on major consumer categories, such as apparel, appliances, footwear, furniture and home decorations, is high.

Generally, people dress up to attend or host, and thus splurge on items for entertaining guests or festive celebrations. With the pandemic’s overarching influence and government restrictions on large gatherings in India this year, we think that shoppers are less likely to spend on products they can showcase at events, such as accessories, clothing and jewelry, and more likely to spend on items for their homes and for smaller celebrations.

Although the government has introduced two schemes for public sector employees in India to boost consumer spending this festive season, we think it is unlikely to significantly affect overall consumer spending. Only around 2.0% of the population of India was employed in the public sector in 2015 (most recent available data)—a small proportion of the country’s population of more than 1 billion people.

Big Billion Days 2020: What’s New

Pre-Booking To Ensure Stock Availability

Flipkart is allowing shoppers to pre-book products that they wish to buy, for as little as ₹1 ($0.01). This will help the retailer to avoid stockout situations—a common issue observed at shopping events, including Amazon’s Prime Day, which was held in India earlier this year.

After pre-booking items for a minimum fee between October 11 and 14, shoppers will be able to pay the remaining amount on October 16 to confirm their orders. Flipkart Plus members will be able to complete their pre-ordered purchases a day earlier on October 15.

We think that enabling pre-booking will allow sellers on the platform to gauge consumer demand for specific products early and help move inventory between warehouses and fulfillment centers accordingly. By spacing out orders over several days, Flipkart can avoid shopper traffic surges and ease last-mile delivery bottlenecks.

[caption id="attachment_117536" align="aligncenter" width="450"] Flipkart banner promoting pre-booking
Source: Flipkart.com[/caption]    

Gamifying the Shopping Experience

Flipkart app users can access games offering the change to win “SuperCoins” or credit that they can redeem for exclusive offers or products. For example, shoppers can redeem 20 SuperCoins to receive a ₹100 ($1.36) discount on groceries or buy a subscription to the Disney+ Hotstar video streaming platform for 1,499 SuperCoins. Shoppers can also buy a number of products, ranging from clothing to food and small home appliances, using a combination of SuperCoins and cash.

[caption id="attachment_117537" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Games through which Flipkart users can earn SuperCoins
Source: Flipkart app[/caption]  

Partnership with Paytm

This year, Flipkart has partnered with payments app Paytm to allow users to pay through the Paytm app for products purchased during the Big Billion Days shopping event. This expands the payment choices available to Flipkart shoppers and is offered alongside Flipkart’s own payments app, PhonePe.

Flipkart users will also receive cashback on products that they paid for using Paytm. By integrating Paytm into its platform, Flipkart also expands its reach to Paytm users who have not shopped with Flipkart before, thus creating an opportunity to expand its user base.

Enhanced Personalization Algorithms

Jeyandran Venugopal, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Flipkart, told The Economic Times that the retailer has enhanced its personalization algorithms “to understand a customer’s brand sensitivity, brand preferences, price sensitivity and category affinities to give them the best-optimized experience.” Flipkart has been investing in machine learning to provide its customers a hyperlocal service, called Flipkart Quick, and it has partnered with local convenience stores to provide fast deliveries to shoppers.

Flipkart Offers and Promotions

Flipkart is providing a number of attractive offers to encourage shoppers to shop during their Big Billion Days event, including:

• Interest-free payments with certain banks—customers can use debit and credit cards issued by Indian banks ICICI and HDFC, among others, to pay for purchases in monthly instalments and Flipkart will absorb the cost of the interest charged by the banks on the installments
• 10% discount on payments made using debit and credit cards issued by the State Bank of India
• Up to 80% off electronics and accessories
• Up to 75% off TVs and appliances
• 50–80% off furniture
• Up to 80% off Flipkart brands

Other Retailers: Upcoming Events

Myntra: Flipkart’s fashion platform will hold its Big Fashion Festival from October 16 to 22. Myntra has partnered with 100 brands across 1,000 stores to ensure fast delivery of fashion orders during the festive season. The platform said that it expects to serve over 4 million customers this season and will offer over 900,000 styles from over 5,000 brands during the sale.

Amazon: The e-commerce retailer’s Great Indian Festival sale will run for a month from October 17. Prime members can access sale deals 24 hours ahead of the official launch. Similar to Flipkart’s offer with SBI, Amazon is offering a 10% discount on payments made using HDFC debit and credit cards. It is also offering cashback of up to 10% on purchases from small businesses. Headline discounts include up to 60% off electronics and accessories, up to 75% off TVs and large appliances, up to 80% off home and kitchen products, and 50–70% off on Amazon products, including Echo, Fire TV and Kindle items.

JioMart: Reliance Retail’s online grocery banner is offering up to 50% off on festive food and supplies. The platform is still in a testing stage and is only available to select zip codes in the city of Mumbai.

Reliance Digital: Reliance Retail’s consumer electronics store is offering 10% cashback on payments made using HDFC cards, up to 60% off on home appliances and several additional offers on TVs, Tablets and other products.

Shoppers Stop: The department store retailer is offering up to 70% off Indian dresses, up to 60% off selected brands, including international watch brands. It is also offering free shipping to members of its loyalty program First Citizen.

Tata Cliq: The multicategory e-commerce platform is offering up to 30% off laptops, up to 70% off watches, up to 30% off washing machines and 10% discount on purchases above ₹5,000 ($65) that are paid for using a Kotak Mahindra bank card.

What We Think

Celebrations during this festive season are going to be restrained due to coronavirus-led restrictions on large gatherings. People are also less likely to go to stores for festive purchases due to pandemic, leading to a shift toward online purchases.

Implications for Brands/Retailers

• Brands and retailers should make the most of consumers’ shift to online shopping and offer attractive features to engage and retain online customers. Brands and retailers that do not yet have a strong online presence can use marketplace platforms as turnkey solutions as they are one of the most convenient methods to create an online storefront.
• Retailers will stand to benefit from pent-up demand from the months that stores were closed during lockdowns and from shoppers’ propensity to spend during the festive season.

Implications for Technology Vendors

• Online shopping events tend to experience heavy customer traffic that can have an adverse impact on websites. Technology vendors should look at ways to offer products and services that mitigate these instances, particularly with the coronavirus-related spike in e-commerce.
• Technology providers for digital payments—such as Paytm—supply chain management and last-mile delivery should look at ways to enhance retailers’ existing systems and help them to quickly deploy specific features with minimal investment.