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With the festive season approaching in India, e-commerce platforms have initiated their own festive sales as well. The competition over the online festival market started a few years back with two of the leading e-commerce platforms - Amazon and Flipkart - coming out with their targeted festive sale strategy called the ‘Great Indian Festival’ and ‘Big Billion Day’, respectively. Amazon announced the next wave of their ‘The Great Indian Festival’ sale targeting the Diwali and Dhanteras market this year. Following Amazon closely, Flipkart also announced a second round of sales from October 24, 2018, and called it the ‘Festive Dhamaka Days’ sale.

An advantage of being able to avail the certain exclusive offers of these sales was offered to Amazon Prime and Flipkart Plus members. Unlike previous years, the Festive Dhamaka Days offered deals and discounts on different categories from day one. Amazon India said that their customers can expect some of the best deals on mobile phones and fashion segments. During their Dussehra sale, Flipkart and Amazon India both reportedly earned around $2 billion in revenue.

Best deals of the festive season

The best deals were offered on electronic items and included high end products and brands. In addition to giving discounts up to 50%, Amazon also offered guaranteed exchange prices of around 70% on certain phone models. The buyers also got the offer of free replacement of screens for a period of one year on their purchases during the sale.

Apart from these deals, there were numerous daily offers that were offered for the buyers. In the case of Flipkart, the customers could avail an instant discount of 10% by paying with Axis Bank debit or credit cards. There were options for Equated Monthly Installment (EMI) via debit cards as well in addition to no-cost EMIs via all credit cards and Bajaj Finserv cards. There were also cash back offers in the case of online payments, PhonePe and for Flipkart Plus members. TVs and other electronic appliances were on discounts up to 70% whereas smartphones received a discount range of 50% or higher. Additional exchange and no-cost EMI options were also provided with up to 90% discount on Flipkart’s own products.

Amazon also offered instant discounts with several banks, cash backs on using Amazon Pay, no cost EMI and other such options. Extra 10% cash back on ICICI and Citibank cards was also offered. Customers who had more than Rs. 5,000 in their Amazon Pay accounts, they got Rs. 250 as cash back.

Amazon also offered no-cost EMI for all major credit cards and Bajaj Finserv cards. While Amazon Prime members got an early access similar to Flipkart Plus members, customers residing in Bengaluru, Delhi, NCR, Mumbai and Hyderabad got delivery in about 2 hours.

Amazon’s festival sale provided top deals on best-selling smartphones with up to 70% off along with additional 15% cash back on Amazon Pay. It also offered 80% discount plus extra 10% Amazon Pay cash back in the case of furnishing and kitchen products. In the case of electronic appliances, they provided up to 60% discount and Alexa built-in devices were sold at a discounted rate of 70%. Kindle’s e-books were also sold at highly discounted prices.