The spread and connect of e-commerce beyond the top metro cities is evident not only from the buyers’ side but increasingly also from the sellers’ side too.

Half-way into its first Diwali Sale (16-20 October), Snapdeal, one of India’s leading value-focused online marketplace, has shared that 65% of the orders placed in the sale so far have been received by sellers located beyond the top 5 metropolitan areas of the country.

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While sellers located in Delhi NCR, Mumbai Metropolitan Region, Kolkata, Chennai & Bengaluru account for nearly 35% of the total number of orders received so far, it is the sellers from smaller cities who have received a greater share of online orders this year.

A large part of these orders will be served by sellers based in well-established commercial hubs in non-metro cities like Jaipur, Surat, Ahmedabad, Coimbatore etc. However, these orders are no longer centred only around these cities.

Snapdeal’s “Kum Mein Dum” sale has also seen more orders flow to smaller centres like Avinashi in Tamil Nadu for textiles, Palitana in Gujarat for footwear, Rewa in Madhya Pradesh for gaming accessories, Muktsar in Punjab for herbal products, Birlapur in West Bengal for home decor products etc.

According to a Snapdeal spokesperson, “Ahead of Diwali, we had conducted extensive outreach to on-board sellers from more than a hundred smaller cities, previously under-represented on India’s e-commerce map. We are gratified to see orders flow to these new sellers, all of whom without exception are very small enterprises. From Kalol in Gujarat to Birlapur in West Bengal and from Hansi in Haryana to Krishnagiri in Tamil Nadu, e-commerce is changing  India, one order at a time.”

Ahead of Diwali, Snapdeal had opened 25 logistics centres to serve the expected surge in orders, especially from smaller cities. With these centres located closer to seller facilities, this is now helping move the Diwali orders faster.

(The company is solely responsible for the entire information provided and the claims made in the story and the publication does not take any responsibility whatsoever for the authenticity and correctness of the information shared)