It was D-Day for online shoppers on Monday (October 6) as two e-commerce giants in India battled it out with some of the greatest sales of the season. While Flipkart has been building up the momentum for its ‘The Big Billion Day’ sale for over a week, Snapdeal played it up with its ‘Buy one get one free’ offers.
Flipkart had earlier announced discount offers up to 50 per cent on a wide range of products but the overwhelming demand led to the website crashing multiple times during the course of the day. The sudden surge in demand also left many users disappointed as the items went ‘out of stock’ as soon as the deals went live.
Going by the social media rumour mill, Snapdeal provided a much better buying experience.
Kya re Flipkart? Your MacBookAir 13" is Rs.56,490 and Snapdeal has it at Rs.49,999! >http://t.co/P627azUmGX vs. >http://t.co/lj91iSnqOF
— Karthik Srinivasan (@beastoftraal) >October 6, 2014The best Amazon thing about Flipkart is thatbefore you could, somebody else Snaps theDeal >#BigBillionDay
— dinesh.s (@dinesh0033) >October 6, 2014
At this point, Flipkart should start selling servers for cheap, considering how frequently I see "Internal Server error"
— Ashok (@krishashok) >October 6, 2014The Flipkart Big billion sale ended at 8:05 a.m. Thanks for coming.
— GabbbarSingh (@GabbbarSingh) >October 6, 2014The Bangalore-based e-commerce gaint attributed the technical glitch to the mad rush for its limited time offers and steal deals. The discount sale will run till 8:00 a.m. on October 7, Flipkart confirmed. The company has deployed 10,000 field staff to ensure all transacted orders reach its customers on time.
"We got a billion hits on our site today & achieved sales target of $100 mn in just 10 hours: Sachin & Binny Bansal of >#Flipkart>@the_hindu
— Mahim Pratap Singh (@mayhempsingh) >October 6, 2014
Flipkart's rival Amazon will launch 'Diwali Dhamaka Week' from October 10, during which the U.S.-based company will hope to deliver a much better buying experience. Earlier, in an >interview to The Hindu, Founder and CEO, Jeff Bezos talked about the Indian e-commerce market and on how Amazon plans to differentiate itself from Flipkart.
>@techno_monk Due to great shopper response for steal deals & limited time offers, our stocks ran out in a flash. There're more..stay.
— Flipkart (@Flipkart) >October 6, 2014
You maybe facing issues shopping on our site right now - sorry! We're fixing this as we speak and will be up and running in 15 mins!
— Flipkart (@Flipkart) >October 6, 2014A look at some of the prominent discounts that were up for grabs:
Flipkart | Re. 1 pen drives; Karbonn phones at Rs. 99; iPod (16 GB) at Rs. 12,500; 50% on all Van Heusen products for men; |
Snapdea l | Macbook Pro for Rs. 34,000 ; I Phone 5s for Rs. 25, 000 ; Nexus 5 (16 GB) at Rs. 22, 000; 55% off and more off on fashion accessories; buy one get one free option in women’s clothing |
Amazon | Nexus 5 (16 GB) – Rs. 22,000; Lenovo tablets – RS. 7, 000; Seagate 1TB – Rs. 3,500; HTC Dezire 516 – Rs. 11,000; 60% and more off on footwear for men and women |
