India's Festival Economy
Diwali Sales and Online Shopping Festivals
How e-commerce platforms turned festivals into giant online sales events like Big Billion Days and Great Indian Festival, and the economics of deep discounts.
E-commerce firms hold massive festival sales.
Big events
- Flipkart’s Big Billion Days (since 2014).
- Amazon’s Great Indian Festival.
- Myntra, Meesho and others run festive sales.
Scale
Online festive sales run into tens of thousands of crores of rupees, with smartphones and fashion leading.
Why discounts
- Attract new customers.
- Clear inventory.
- Price discrimination: bargain hunters wait for sales, while others buy anytime.
- Brands and platforms share discount costs.
Logistics
Firms hire lakhs of seasonal workers for warehouses and delivery.
Small towns
A growing share of orders come from tier-2 and tier-3 cities.
Regulation
Rules limit deep discounting by platforms under FDI policies, and traders’ groups complain about predatory pricing.
At midnight, when a festive sale begins, millions of shoppers rush to buy discounted phones, crashing some apps briefly.
They're strategies for customers and price discrimination.
- Big Billion Days and Great Indian Festival are major sales.
- Smartphones and fashion lead festive online sales.
- Discounts attract customers and price-discriminate.
- Small towns drive growing shares.
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