Consumers are expanding their shopping baskets during this festive season, beyond traditional big-ticket purchases such as televisions & refrigerators with beauty & personal care (BPC) and healthcare emerging as increasingly important categories, according to Nishant Dalal, vice president, consumables, FMCG and healthcare, Flipkart.
“Consumers are now shopping across categories, including makeup, skincare and products for children,” Dalal said in an interaction with FE.
Flipkart is entering the festive season with the FMCG segment growing around 50% year-on-year and beauty nearly 60%. The growth is being driven by higher number of customer & order growth and beauty is expected to remain a key driver during the festive season. Premium perfumes and makeup are already seeing strong demand, particularly in regions where Durga Puja and Navratri are important festivals. Baby care and health & fitness are also growing strongly, especially beyond metros, according to Dalal.
In BPC, quick commerce is becoming a larger contributor in metros. Flipkart Minutes has grown fivefold over the past year and now accounts for around 15% of Flipkart’s BPC business, Dalal said.
Beyond metros, greater access to information through social media influencers and the rise of D2C brands are reshaping demand in tier-2 and tier-3 markets.
Consumers, particularly Gen Z and millennials, are now making purchases based on product ingredients and information available through digital influencers and social media, he said. Consumers are now looking for specific information such as the concentration of active ingredients in skincare products, which is also driving growth in higher price segments.
Gen Z is already a significant contributor to Flipkart’s business across these categories. Dalal said the cohort accounts for more than 50% of the company’s FMCG, general merchandise and beauty business, with its contribution even higher in beauty.
The cohort’s digital behaviour is also influencing product curation. Gen Z consumers are highly informed, follow trends across Instagram and other platforms and have more individualised preferences, pushing the company to work with brands to bring new products and innovations to consumers faster and at affordable price points, he said.
Rising input costs, however, remain a pressure point for the categories. Flipkart is working with sellers to improve scale and procurement efficiencies and contain costs rather than rely on reductions elsewhere. “Our endeavour is to help sellers get a larger scale, and hence bring down or optimise their costs,” he said.
On growing scrutiny around food and FMCG compliance, Dalal said Flipkart already has checks in place and reviews its catalogue when issues emerge.
“I don’t think we need to add a lot of layers in terms of scrutiny because we already had a strong compliance in place earlier as well,” he said.