The site of the country’s largest e-commerce company Flipkart crashed within hours of launching its much touted Big Billion Day sale on Monday as millions of customers logged on to place orders for a plethora of products and brands offered at huge discounts.
Sale on Flipkart started at 8 am and most of the products under the scheme were sold out by afternoon. The company claimed it sold products worth $100 million (over Rs 600 crore) within 10 hours, even as its rival Snapdeal pegged its sales at Rs 1 crore a minute.
Snapdeal claimed it sold 10 products per second across categories between October 3 and October 5 but did not disclose the total sales value. There were also no sales figures available from Amazon, which is running a three-day discount campaign.
"Our technology team has been dedicated towards addressing errors and providing constant support to accommodate the largest scale of traffic and customer visits e-commerce has witnessed across the country," said Flipkart co-founder & CEO Sachin Bansal.
"We got a billion hits on our site today and achieved our 24-hour sales target of $100 million in GMV (gross merchandise value) in just 10 hours," a joint statement issued later in the day by Flipkart co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, said.
As Monday’s date - October 6 or 6.10 coincided with 610, the flat number from where Flipkart’s co-founders Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal began their journey in 2007 to float the country’s first e-commerce firm as a start-up in this tech hub - the company decided to offer a host of retail products at huge discounts.
With the company splashing full-page advertisements in leading newspapers across the country, offering "bumper discounts" and "crazy deals" on consumer durables, electronic goods and a variety of utility products at unbeatable prices, there was a mad rush for placing orders, as some of the most-sought after products were available on first-cum-first basis due to limited stocks.
"A day-long shopping event that will unite a billion people in the country through unbeatable offers, unbelievable discounts, lucky draws and out of the world deals," the company claimed in its sneak peek ahead of the special sales on the ‘Big Billion Day’.
With 15 million products across 70 categories, including books, media, consumer electronics and lifestyle, Flipkart offers delivery services like in-a-day guarantee across 50 cities and same-day-guarantee in 13 cities across the country.
The e-retailer boasts of 22-million registered users with four-million daily visits and delivers five million shipments per month. The company has deployed a whopping 10,000 field staff to ensure all transacted orders reach its customers on time.
Meanwhile, traders body CAIT while expressing concernsover huge discounts being offered by e-commerce firms asked the Commerce and Industry Ministry to take steps to monitor and regulate online businesses.
"We invoke your kind and immediate attention to ongoing sale offers conducted by various e-commerce companies since last three days...They are offering discounts from 20 per cent to 70 per cent, whereas traders are forced to sell same products in offline markets at a higher prices since their purchase price is on a very higher side," National General Secretary of Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) Praveen Khandelwal said.