India continues to shop steadily through the first phase of festive season sales

E-commerce volumes up 16% in the first ten days of the festive sales: Unicommerce analysis

8th October 2024, New Delhi: With the first ten days of the sale season complete, the e-commerce volumes are 16% higher as compared to the previous year (26th Sep. - 5th Oct. 2024 vs. 7th - 16th Oct. 2023). The GMV is also higher by 17% in the same period.

This analysis is based on over 2.8 million order items processed on Unicommerce’s platform during the ten day period for both years.

The growth is driven, amongst others, by categories like healthy snacks & eatables which grew by over 65% YoY, kitchenware which grew 34% in order volumes this year and apparel which witnessed over 22% rise in order volumes during this period.

With Navratri festivities commencing, other categories like home decor, travel accessories, and electronics & gaming accessories recorded a significant YoY 100%+ jump in order volumes during this period.

 

The sale trends showcase an evolving category mix as consumers explore  segments other than the regular festive purchases like ethnic wear and traditional clothes, electronics, gift items etc during the sale period.

Over the past few years, the festive sales season has started to kick off sooner. While previously, the sales started with the commencement of Navratri festivities, the trend has shifted towards launching sales a few days earlier, with the sales then continuing through the festive season till Diwali and beyond.

With the growing participation of shoppers across the vast length and breadth of India, brands and marketplaces rely on technology to efficiently handle the surge in orders on account of festive sales. Unicommerce’s 250+ plug-and-play integrations across marketplaces & carts, logistics service providers and ERPs help in efficient processing and shipping of orders and also enables optimal utilization of inventory across dispersed warehouses and multiple marketplaces and brand-owned sales channels.

 

Beyond the metro cities, Unicommerce’s data shows Tier II cities like Jaipur, Lucknow, Coimbatore, Surat and Patna and Tier III cities like Kolar, Alwar, Kamrup, Sonipat and Gandhinagar as leading online markets by order volumes in the 2024 festive season sales.

About Unicommerce eSolutions Limited:

Incorporated in 2012, Unicommerce is an e-commerce enablement Software-as-a-Service (“SaaS”) platform that enables end-to-end management of e-commerce operations for brands, sellers and logistics service provider firms. Unicommerce enables businesses to efficiently manage their entire journey of post-purchase e-commerce operations through a comprehensive product suite that includes warehouse and inventory management, multi-channel order management, omni-channel retail management, a seller management dashboard for marketplaces, and the newly launched UniShip, UniReco, and UniGPT. These products aid in streamlining e-commerce operations for the company’s clients and enables Unicommerce to become a critical part of the supply chain stack of its clients.

Unicommerce’s comprehensive suite of SaaS products acts as the nerve centre for e-commerce fulfilment operations for businesses and allows them to manage inventory across multiple locations, minimize fulfilment costs, process orders for multiple online and offline channels, manage returns, generate correct invoices, reconcile order payments, shipment tracking for customers, taxation and other regulatory compliances. The company’s product suite is sector and size-agnostic and designed to meet the business needs of various types and sizes of retail and e-commerce enterprises, both online and offline.