Amazon, Flipkart leverage tech to drive festive sales

Major e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Flipkart intend to leverage technology on the user interface and backend logistics to make the most of this year’s festive season. Artificial intelligence/ machine learning (AI/ML), video commerce and augmented reality applications are expected to be focus areas for tech deployment.

“Flipkart customers can expect enhanced on-app experiences including video commerce, immersive technologies like AR and 3D try-ons,” Harsh Chaudhary, head of growth (vice president), Flipkart. He said the video commerce piece for Flipkart has grown in consumption over the past year-and-a-half with over 2 million hours of content seen by users.

Flipkart’s The Big Billion Days and Amazon’s Great Indian Festival kick off on September 27. Amazon Prime customers will get access to the shopping festival a day earlier though. The festive sales may go on till November 3 in some way, shape or form.

Part of Amazon’s focus, in addition to user experience, is facilitating digital transformation among small and medium businesses on the platform to get a wider exposure during the peak shopping season, it said on its blog. “We continue to innovate using AI/ML to improve seller and customer experiences, and ensure fast deliveries,” an Amazon India spokesperson said in a blogpost.

For Meesho, the focus this year is to further build on the Mall offering, which was introduced last year. Through this feature, users can engage with branded products on Meesho’s platform.

“With Meesho Mall, the company is democratising access to branded products for millions of Indians this festive season with its diverse and ever-expanding portfolio of ~1,000 national, D2C and regional brands,” a spokesperson told FE.

In addition to the focus on enhancing user experience through technical interventions and making more products and brands available during the festive season, e-comm players are also preparing their backend to service the surge in orders during festive season.

“We continue to make investments in infrastructure and have launched 11 fulfilment centres in the run up to this year’s festive season, while creating over 100,000 new jobs across 40+ regions. We have strengthened our supply chain technologies leveraging ML (for route planning and faster sortation for example), which ensures faster deliveries to customers across 19,000 pin-codes PAN India,” Flipkart’s Choudhary said.

Both Amazon and Flipkart will offer EMI and bank offers through their partner lenders as they do every year. Customers will get offers like cashback and pay later on Amazon Pay this year too.

This year’s festive season is expected see a 23% increase in sales revenue, nearly touching Rs 1 lakh crore, according to a report by Datum Intelligence. It expects mobile phones and fashion to account for 50% of the spending during the season.