Ecomm sellers have little to cheer in lacklustre Republic Day sales

BENGALURU: In what was the first big sale event of 2019, online merchants on Flipkart and Amazon registered a tepid response, blaming weak consumer sentiment and lack of awareness created by the two firms.

The sales, which kicked off on January 20, did little to move the sales needle for online vendors despite them running promotions. They said this was unlike previous promotional events held by the online marketplaces ahead of Republic Day.

“This sale was nowhere near as good as previous years. We easily did three to four times of our daily sales during the event last year, but now it’s hardly 1.3 times. The number of promotions they (Flipkart and Amazon) carried out was very less,” said a seller of computer accessories on online platforms.


The lacklustre performance during the sale is a double whammy for online marketplaces which are already reeling under the pressure of becoming compliant with changes to India’s FDI laws in online retail. On December 26, last year, the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP) said any vendor that sold over 25% of goods on a single platform would be deemed to be a captive seller on that platform.

“Typically these kind of sales, whether it’s Republic Day or one of the smaller events, we expect to see vendors doing sales that are around 3-4 times the normal. If it’s lesser than that, then it raises a serious question about the sentiment in the market,” said an analyst who did not want to be named.

While an Amazon spokesperson said the company was “encouraged by the response” of customers during its sale, Flipkart did not respond to queries from ET.