E-commerce platforms, including social commerce and grocery players, have clocked $2.7 billion (more than Rs 20,000 crore) in the first four days of the festive week sale that started on October 3, new data showed on Saturday.

E-commerce platforms were on track to achieve $4.8 billion (over Rs 36,000 crore) gross merchandise value (GMV), predicted by Bengaluru-based market research firm RedSeer Consulting last month.

The report said that the first four days of the festive week last year accounted for 63 per cent of the overall festive week sales — as compared to this year where it accounts for 57 per cent of the projected sales.

Smartphones contributed 50 per cent of GMV during the first four days of sales.

“With the festive sales lasting longer than last year (nine days compared to seven days), we are observing the customer demand being more spread out across the period than being concentrated in the first half of the festive week,” said Ujjwal Chaudhry, associate partner at RedSeer.

To that tune, “we have observed sales of $2.7 billion across e-commerce platforms and we expect another further $2.1 billion over the next five days”, he added.

The e-commerce platforms are likely to clock over $9 billion gross merchandise value (GMV) during the festive season (October-December period), which is a growth of 23 per cent from last year.

The report estimates that over 75 per cent of customers are planning to buy equivalent to or more than last year across categories like mobiles, large appliances, beauty, and fashion.

The seller sentiments are equally optimistic this year. Many sellers are planning to offer 10-30 per cent discounts on platforms, with the goal of releasing higher volume sales.

“With horizontal platforms rapidly scaling up their warehousing capabilities towards ensuring prompt delivery, the delivery time is expected to reduce by five hours (YoY),” the findings showed.

With easy credit and instant affordability, buy now pay later (BNPL) schemes are likely to account for 10-15 per cent of sales this festive season.

BNPL accounted for 4-7 per cent of sales last year but is poised to command a higher 10-15 per cent share of sales this year, the report noted.

The overall online GMV this year is expected to touch $49-52 billion which is around 37 per cent growth from last year, primarily driven by strong consumer funnel expansion and the high adoption of online shopping post-Covid across the categories.

(With IANS inputs)