This Diwali turned out be very good for Snapdeal. Up until now the online marketplace earned its revenue primarily from northern and western parts of India. But this Diwali, Snapdeal’s sales from Southern markets touched a new high.
While speaking to Business Line, Rahul Taneja, VP- Category Management at Snapdeal confessed, “Till the last three months beginning August, no city from the South featured in our top cities list. Today, the top five fastest growing cities in terms of customers, orders and revenue generated on Snapdeal are all from the South. They are Bengaluru, Bommanahalli, Hyderabad, Karimnagar and Chittoor. Chennai and Madurai markets are also growing well.”
Top selling products were gold jewellery & coins and silk sarees. Other categories included air-conditioners, laptops, mobile phones and television sets.
This sudden rise in demand wasn’t a surprise, but a well chalked out plan by Snapdeal. The etailer made a conscious effort to increase ad spends in the South region during the festive season. Roping in local sellers of all sizes was also part of the strategy. And it worked!
Talking about their advertising campaign, Taneja said, “We spent over 60 per cent more than we historically spend on the South advertising campaign across TV, print and digtal media. To the 2 lakh sellers on Snapdeal, we added 15,000 in the last six months from the South alone, which helped boost sales. This was accomplished in partnership with the governments of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, who helped small and mid-sized sellers onto our marketplace.”
To meet the rising demand, the company will also open 15 new Fulfilment Centres in the South.
Just days after Flipkart relaunched its mobile site, Snapdeal too has joined the league. On Thursday, the company unveiled Snap-Lite, a mobile site for shoppers with slow Internet connections.
While Flipkart’s site is accessible only to Chrome and Opera mobile browsers, Snap-Lite is available to all its users. What it lacks is app-like features such as shortcut on the home screen and push notifications that Flipkart Lite has. In terms of options Snapdeal wins, as a user has the power to select from desktop site, Snap-lite, 3G mobile site and app!
The rivalry between Flipkart and Snapdeal is getting intense with each passing day. Let’s see out of the two rivals who introduces a new feature next and how many days it takes the other one to replicate the move.
Editor team is specialized in introducing the marketplace content targeting the Indian online sellers. They plan and coordinate to bring the appealing content for the small businesses on how to partner with the e-commerce sites like Amazon and Flipkart and strategies for improving their online business.
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