Flipkart sells half a million mobile handsets in 10 hours

Mukesh Bansal, head of the e-commerce business, and KV Anand, senior vice-president of customer experience, are also out in the field.

The sale that started on October 13 will continue till October 17, with a new category being introduced every day.

SoftBank-backed Snapdeal, which saw five million app downloads on the Day One of sale, said it has set new benchmarks this time around: About 98.9% orders were dispatched within 24 hours of order placement, achieving 98.6% on-time delivery.

Overall ad spends by e-commerce players during 2015 are also likely to increase, to an estimated Rs 2,700-3000 crore from Rs 1,500-1,800 crore a year ago.

The initiative seems to carry a few echoes from the past. The giant online retailer is planning to leave offline and online retailers far behind in selling mobile phones by offering huge discounts this festive season.

On October 14, Flipkart posted on its Facebook page: “We have had a fantastic Day 2 of #‎BigBillionDays”.

About the first evening of purchase, Flipkart had offered 10 lakh (1million) items within the first 10 hrs with six million trips from over the country and 25 products sold per minute.

Flipkart on Thursday announced that it has sold half a million mobile handsets in ten hours after opening the sales of mobile phones during “The Big Billion Days” sale. Also, Snapdeal is not offering the 128GB model of iPhone 6. Paytm is running its “Navratri Home and Kitchen” sale and “Paytm se Stadium” offer while Amazon is running the “Great Indian Festive Sale”.

Snapdeal co-founder and CEO Kunal Bahl took a dig at the technical glitches that Facebook faced and boasted about his company’s better performance.

Since India bars foreign capital in business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce, Amazon operates a marketplace, lending its platform for other retailers and manufacturers to sell products, as do Flipkart and Snapdeal. It is available for pre-order on Flipkart, Amazon and via Apple reseller.

Over 70,000 units of large size products like Furniture, Beds, TVs, Sofas etc. have been shipped in just three days.