Get ready to spend this monday. Online shopping companies are bringing the online discount shopping festival ‘Cyber Monday’ to India.
About 50 online shopping companies have set up the Great Online Shopping Festival website www.gosf.in promising steep discounts this monday.
“Buyers can look forward to exciting deals across a variety of product range,” said Google, one of the partners for the festival.
The concept of ‘Cyber Monday’ is a the online equivalent of the ‘Black Friday’ shopping event in the United States. Black Friday is the Friday following Thanksgiving in the United States. Retailers cut prices of many goods by as much as half on that single day in an effort to drive sales. The day is noted as much for shopping accidents, as people try to grab as much of the discounted stuff as they can, as for the sweet deals it offers.
“For the first time, an Industry wide initiative of this scale is being attempted to offer users all across the country an incentive to gain from unbeatable deals that they can find on the web on a single day,” Google India said.
The India website is promising discounts of up to 40% on smart phones and tablets, up to 70% off on premium and branded footwear, up to 70% off on home decor products, 20% off on diamond & gold jewelry. It will also offer an additional discount of 12% for first time buyers only on 12th December.
“The online shopping industry is already over a 1.5 $ billion and with this initiative we want to reach out and promote online shopping to the first time buyers,” Rajan Anandan, Managing Director of Google India, said.
The festival will see particiaption from eBay, Flipkart.com, Indiatimes, snapdeal.com, makemytrip.com, Yebhi.com, firstcry.com, Sulekha.com, Homeshop18.com, Croma, Gitanjali Group, Shine.com, Yatra.com, Zansaar, Fashionara, Caratlane, pepperfry.com, healthkart, Lenskart, Monster India, Bagskart, Jewelskart.com, Watchkart, Tradus, GoIbibo, Timtara, FreeCultr, BeStylish, Inkfruit, Myntra, Zovi, Fashionandyou, Quikr, Hoopos, Naaptol and Jabong.
India has more than 137 million Internet users, or about 11% of the total population. However, online shopping is still in its infancy in the country.
According to a recent reportby Zinnov, internet purchases are worth $10 billion (Rs 50,000 crore) at present in India.
However online retail accounts for only 0.5% of the total retail segment in India. Zinnov expected e-commerce to touch $125-260 billion in the next 12 years in India.
However, it must be noted a more than half of the total online spending in India is for various forms of tickets — such as airtickets, railway tickets, bus tickets etc.. Actual merchandise sales is still only a fraction.
“For this 24 hour sale, we have lined up some really exciting offers from our portfolio of 500 brands and we’re confident that shoppers will come back for more,” Mukesh Bansal, Co-Founder & CEO, Myntra.com said.
It will also see participation by sites like Firstcry, Goodlife, Babyoye, Hushbabies, PropTiger, Fabfurnish, IndiaProperty, People Interactive (Shaadi.com), BigRock, BharatMatrimony, Utsav Fashion, Right florists, Right Shopping, Gets Holidays, Jet Airways, Travelyaari, redBus, Indigo Airlines and Getit Infoservices.
