Post-mortem of #BigBillionDay – From a brand who sells on Flipkart and SnapDeal

In the last couple of days – it seems like the whole country has got special interest in E-Commerce Industry. Facebook and Twitter feed is flooded with posts, first criticising the big billion day and then appreciating the apology letter by the Bansals.

We at bluegape sell our merchandise across multiple categories on Flipkart and SnapDeal. In terms of number of categories and number of SKUs – we are the biggest brand on every major marketplace in India. Our current catalog size is 1 Lakh+ (In terms of catalog size – we are bigger than most niche e-commerce vertical players) and we sell across categories like Apparel and Bags, Home Decor and Furnishing, Electronic Accessories etc. We are basically a fan merchandise company where designs are submitted by designers and brands from all over the world. These brands and designers earn royalty on every sale that happens through bluegape.

6th October (The big Billion Day) : In just 10 hours, we did 11 times the number of transactions on flipkart that we do normally on a daily basis. Flipkart had to put our account on hold after 10 hours to make sure that we are able to process the orders in the best possible way. While surprisingly on that day- On SnapDeal, we did 3 times the number of transactions that we do on a normal day. SnapDeal kept the account running for complete 24 hours.

7th October (Next to The big Billion Day) : Flipkart again made the account active at 8 AM in the morning. We did double the transactions in 24 hours in comparison to a normal day sale. While to our surprise – SnapDeal again did 3 times the transactions as what we do normally.

8th October (Two days after The big Billion Day) : At Flipkart, we did one and half times the transactions.  While on SnapDeal, we managed to double the normal day transactions.

Looking at the today’s transactions volume – we can see that Flipkart will settle down at 1.5 times the normal numbers and SnapDeal will settle down at double the normal numbers. This is a growth that we have seen for our brand on these two platforms. Still in terms of number of orders – We are doing double the volume of orders on Flipkart than we do on SnapDeal.

Big thing to learn from SnapDeal : Flipkart invested a lot on marketing. SnapDeal hit the right chord (Times of India ad) to grab the attention on social media on the Big Billion day. That is the best marketing stunt one can think of. They nailed it right there.

Flipkart way : I have no right to write – what to learn from Flipkart from the Big Billion Day sale. I have no clue about what it takes to run a marketing campaign at such a big scale. What it takes to make the whole country talk about your brand. What Flipkart has done is super amazing. Few things went wrong. They over promised for which they have already apologised. It took seven years to build the brand and this one mistake could have gone really bad. They managed to handle the thunder really well.

At the end – in last 3 days – as an industry E-Commerce has taken a giant leap forward in terms of awakening the consumerism in masses of India. All thanks to the great efforts of Flipkart and Smart marketing of SnapDeal.