New Delhi: Gearing up for its third annual flagship sales event in October this year, Flipkart, India's largest online marketplace, is in plans to bring about several changes to its deliveries and customer service. The idea, obviously, is to make the Big Billion Day (BBD) sale a big hit.
Reports suggest that Flipkart is in internal talks to hold the event on separate days in October in order to have greater control over deliveries and customer service. According to an ET report, Flipkart is also planning a 'buy now-pay-later' scheme during the sale for customers and is also in talks with all its lenders.
Recently, the government had set guidelines for all the online marketplaces and ordered that "direct or indirect" influence on price of goods or services will not be carried out. But e-commerce giants Flipkart, Amazon and Myntra, have continued running sales arguing that the discounts were offered by their sellers and not them.
The performance of the BBD sale depends upon how many sellers and brands Flipkart is able to get on board for the event as well as the discounts they are willing to offer.
Here are some other steps that the company has taken ahead of the sale:
- Flipkart has already ramped up its online marketing budget to attract more people to its mobile application and its desktop website.
- It has also planned to influence customers through its mobile application targeting its marketing and other schemes.
- Flipkart is also in talks with several banks to offer loans the exciting customers.
- The loan scheme is launched just to promote repeat purchases during the Big Billion Day sale.
In October 2014, Flipkart's first Big Billion Day fetched almost $100 million (about Rs 650 cr) in a single day. However, mismanagement of the large number of orders played a big spoil sport for the company. Last year, the company was prepared and the sale event, brought $300 million (Rs 2 lakh cr approx.) over three days.
The success of the sale event being held this year assumes all the more significance for Flipkart in view of rival Amazon's huge capital allocation towards its India operations. There have also been reports of significant markdowns by its investors and rating agencies, signalling a hit in its valuations. Furthermore, Paytm also plans to start its online retail business, which is expected to be Alibaba's e-commerce launchpad in India with 100 per cent foreign investments.
This year’s sale event is being led by Kalyan Krishnamurthy, who rejoined Flipkart as head of category management in last month. Krishnamurthy, was the company's chief financial officer and head of categories during its first Big Billion Day.
