40% participation from Tier 2 cities in online festive buying: CashKaro

With India’s top e-commerce unicorns – namely, Amazon.in, Flipkart, Snapdeal and ShopClues – battling head-to-head to increase market share, CashKaro.com, a leading cashback and coupons site, has chalked out numbers to comprehend the trends from this festive season sales. Working with all the top e-commerce players puts CashKaro.com in a unique position to compare trends and bestsellers seen across these sites.

On the festive trends, Swati and Rohan Bhargava, Founders, CashKaro.com, said, “The scale of online shopping in India has grown substantially with the increase in internet ready devices, awareness about e-commerce, better user experience enabled byimproved infrastructure in terms of logistics and broadband. All top retailers have unveiled a bevy of offers to entice shoppers to garner a significant portion of their total annual sales during this festive season that will last for most of October. We are expecting a 300 per cent increase in GMV of CashKaro from October-December. Sales are a great incentive to shop and given we offer Cashback over and above all sale discounts and bank card offers, shoppers love to start their journey at CashKaro.com. Retailers are also offering increased affiliate commissions on categories like fashion, beauty and consumables as affiliate sites like us form about 20 per cent of their business.”

Top 5 festive trends as seen on CashKaro site:

1. Top Retailers:

Stiff competition between Amazon.in, Flipkart, Snapdeal and ShopClues in terms of GMV driven

2. Top Product Categories:

• Mobiles 35 per cent and Laptops 6 per cent – Deals on mobile and laptops always have better traction because of their sheer ticket value.
• Fashion 20 per cent and Health & Beauty 5 per cent – Overall transactions in fashion & lifestyle vertical has grown. Retailers are banking upon this category as it offers higher margins for them.
• Small & Large Appliances 9 per cent – This category has seen among the best discounts this season.
• Gift Cards 8 per cent – This category has gained popularity registering a 5X increase in the number of orders this festive season vs normal days of the year.
• TVs 7 per cent – As confidence in online shopping grows, more and more people are willing to buy large items like TVs online. The deals and discounts in this category have been huge.
• Consumables 6 per cent – Recently introduced Faster Delivery options by various e-commerce sites have greatly enabled growth of this category. Moreover, dedicated days like Amazon’s Super Value Days and Snapdeal’s Daily Needs store have really brought focus and momentum in this category.
• Others 4 per cent

3. Average Order Value this festive season:

The Average Order Value through CashKaro platform has been 2X this festive season vis-à-vis rest of the year. The reason for this increase was largely due to higher discounts offered by partner sites and increased spending by customers online.

4. Number of transactions during festive season vs. rest of the year:

There has been a 6X increase in number of transactions via CashKaro.com during the festive period, compared to the rest of the year. This is largely due to the wide array of discounts and promotions being offered to bring new shoppers online and drive repeat purchases. CashKaro.com offered up to 30 per cent extra Cashback/ Rewards on top of all these sales and discounts hence, its members had a great incentive to shop via CashKaro.

Exclusive privileges and financial benefits being offered by portals like Snapdeal, ShopClues, Flipkart and Amazon.in, backed by additional discounts through strategic partnerships with various banks like HDFC, SBI, ICICI Bank, Standard Chartered, American Express, etc., have also played a pivotal role in increasing sales& order value this festive season.

5. Cities that are seeing greater interest during Diwali:

The top 5 Metros (Delhi/ NCR, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata) have continued to dominate along with upcoming metro cities such as Pune, Ahmedabad, Jaipur and Chandigarh. This year, Tier II/ Tier III cities such as, Bhopal, Pimpri Chinchwad, Ernakulam, Bhubaneswar, those in Telangana region, etc., have registered an increased traffic as against last year.

6. Preferred Device to shop from: Mobile vs Desktop:
Mobile - 40 per cent
Desktop - 60 per cent

Unlike last year, equal promotion on both Desktop and App platforms are seen as retailers have realised that both mediums have their own merits and cannot be ignored.

Adding to the whole festivity this October, CashKaro has also launched its in-house campaign, ‘Cash Wali Diwali’, wherein users who shop via CashKaro on its partner retailers can win Amazon.in gift vouchers daily and a 42-inch LED TV. The campaign prizes are sponsored by Amazon.in, who has been aggressively ramping up its e-commerce wallet share in India.

CashKaro offered up to 10 per cent extra cashback as rewards on all Amazon.in transactions during the Great Indian Festival Sale (October 1-5). Similarly, cashbacks and rewards are being offered on all sales placed during Flipkart ‘The Big Billion Days’, Snapdeal ‘Unbox Sale’, ShopClues ‘Diwali Sale’ and over 1,000 websites.