Flipkart: Big balls on Big Billion Day
These Bansals (Sachin & Binny) and their investors have the intrepidity and balls I said to my friend as I took a sip of my first beer for the evening. What they have just concluded with the seismic Big Billion Day Sale last week was as obnoxious as a white tiger attacking a human at the Delhi Zoo. The Big Billion Day Sale has introduced the experience of shopping online to hordes of shoppers and, mind it, quite a few of them actually made their first purchases online since the advent of formal e-commerce propositions in India.
A research into the events at Flipkart gives credence to my understanding that the foundation of BBDS emulates Flipkart’s very character of an intrepid and ballsy persona (to put it simply; I can recall the mesmerising one-liner delivered by Anupam Kher in Bollywood hit Special 26, “Asli Power Dil mein hoti hai". Yes that’s how one can define the character of Flipkart.)
7 Things that BBDS Achieved in Flat Ten Hours
1. 1 billion: Hits received by the Flipkart website in 10 hours
2. 500,000 (5 Lakh): Number of units sold in each of the mobile and fashion categories
3. 15 minutes: Time taken for the ‘best deals’ to be wiped out
4. $100 million (GMV): contributed by 1.5 million shoppers in 10 hours
5. 3X: Hits received by Snapdeal and Amazon in 10 hours of their average hits during the same duration most likely without any direct marketing money invested
6. Pledge to online: People who’d missed the BBDS benefits have pledged that they will first try/buy online before making any buying decision small or big.
7. Digital opportunities or warfare: Bigbillionday.com had redirected traffic to Amazon and now it is redirecting it to Starsports.com
The Different Flavours of BBDS
The run-up to BBDS preparations must have started many months in advance with meticulous planning and the intention of near zero-defect operations on D-day. This sentiment echoes the expectations/objectives of thousands of people organising the ‘The big fat Indian weddings’ for their daughters/sons. Though, BBDS was no different than the ‘The big fat Indian weddings’ where it wasn't expected to conclude; unless couple of relatives (most of the times Fufa’s and Jeeja’s) created a ruckus for various silly reasons and kept the respective organisers on their toes. In an analogy to Flipkart, these nuisances were ‘Sold out’ and ‘Out of Stock’ apart from the less frequent ‘404 error’ which kept Flipkart machinery biting their nails.
The assumptively affected people (read Twitter elites) made best use of the FREE social networking site “Twitter”,‘Facebook” and ‘Whatsapp” to vent their ire spiced with sarcasm. Though, the negative/positive social buzz has helped Flipkart gain traction that they couldn’t otherwise even dream of buying through any form of paid media. Point in case, my wife actually got to know about the frenzy around the BBDS and had impulsively decided to buy a Nokia Lumia 520 handset for my mother. Though, she’d expected to pay only INR 99/- for the phone as per her Whatsapp group. Alas! here she is; with her first ever online purchase of a physical product. She is an avid traveler and usually buys travel services like flight, hotels… from OTAs/cleartrip only. Thanks to Flipkart my mother will finally start using Whatsapp. Btw, that’s the reason she wanted to buy a smartphone!! Could Whatsapp be fuelling smartphone growth in India?
4 Things that BBDS Could Deliver in 10 hours that I Couldn’t in Years!
1. Instant messaging for everybody: My mother’s latest wish -among many- using Whatsapp will be fulfilled
2. Limiting bazaar outings: Now I won’t have to travel to buy every single thing since my wife has realized the convenience of buying online.
3. Great Bonding: A daughter-in-law took the pure initiative to buy a smartphone for her mother-in-law to fulfil her latest wish. I wish they fulfill more meaningful wishes as well.
4. New acquaintances: People did discover many new acquaintances within the office walls who’d similar interests and seen huddling together even after the BBDS discussing the other online destinations for the best deals.
So Mr Bansal & Mr Bansal, if you want to see the same sort of consumer frenzy like BDDS, the journey’s just begun and we’ll need more of the same audacity and all out fervor.
“And so began the Indian shoppers’ adventure trying/buying online.”