Holiday promotions are a staple of e-commerce, but this year has been unusual in India as the epidemic continues to rage. On the one hand, the epidemic has prompted a large number of consumers to shift their consumption activities from physical stores to online stores. In India, on the other hand, the outbreak has been going on for seven months and there is a lot of pent-up consumer demand. The festival consumption starting in October is a tipping point. In this context, for Indian e-commerce companies, this year's festival promotion is not only a competition for sales, but also a battle for life and death. There is no way to take it lightly, just go for it.


On October 16, India's e-commerce promotion campaign officially kicked off. The first is Flipkart, an Indian e-commerce giant. Flipkart launched "The Big Billion Days" on The 16th. But in reality, for Flipkart members, the sale began in the wee hours of October 15. The event lasts for five days.


It was Amazon, the other giant of India's e-commerce. Amazon's slogan for the Festival promotion is "Great Indian Festival". The promotion will start on October 17th, but for Amazon members, they will be able to enjoy the holiday promotion offered by the e-commerce company at midnight on October 16th. Amazon's offer is even longer, running for one month until November 17.

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The online competition is for discounts. In addition to the proximity of time, both major e-commerce companies are offering attractive shopping discounts. On Flipkart's shopping site, Nokia's smart TV, originally priced at rs70,999, is discounted to Rs39,999, a 43% discount. Amazon's private-label products are even more heavily promoted, with discounts of up to 60%.


Offline competition is the service. Late delivery and slow delivery of e-commerce are the worst experience for Indian consumers. In India, it takes at least two to three days for a consumer to place an order online and finally receive the goods. This year, India's two largest e-commerce companies are wrestling in this regard. Amazon has announced a massive recruitment drive in logistics personnel to speed up delivery. In September, Amazon said it had created 100,000 seasonal jobs for online sales during the holiday season. Flipkart says 70,000 seasonal jobs will be created in the holiday promotion, which starts in October. Meanwhile, Flipkart is again offering paid internships to students from tier 2 and above cities. "The project will shape India's future workforce through a variety of key supply chain roles, which in the long run will help build an ecosystem of qualified, trained and skilled professionals," Flipkart said in a statement. Through this program, students in 21 different regions across India will have the opportunity to gain practical skills in the supply chain of advanced e-commerce platforms.

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The growing number of competitors has made this year's e-commerce war in India even more eye-catching. In previous years, India's e-commerce duopoly was dominated by Amazon and Flipkart. This year, Reliance's JioMart joined the fray, turning the dispute into a three-way split.


The battle between Amazon and Reliance over Future Retail plays out against this backdrop. Reliance's JioMart, boosted by the outbreak this year and the injection of foreign capital from the us and other countries, has broken into the top three e-commerce companies in India, becoming the largest web celebrity in India this year. But JioMart isn't content with that. To further sink ecommerce, Relianceannounced an "immediate acquisition" of Future Retail assets in October. Future Retail has penetrated cities and small towns across India, including some grocery stores, selling products ranging from fashion to electronics. Obviously, Reliance's action threatened the Future development of Amazon. Therefore, Amazon appealed to the court to prevent Reliance from acquiring the assets of Future Retail on the grounds of "engaging with Future Retail".

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What needs to be seen is that the price war, the competition for partners and so on among Indian e-commerce companies are all for market share. This has sacrificed the short-term profit base of the e-commerce companies, making it a long time before they can become profitable in the Indian market. Media data show that the Indian e-commerce industry is far from being profitable. Flipkart, Amazon, Snapdeal and Paytm Mall, the four major players in the Indian e-commerce market, lost 108.79 billion rupees (about $1.51 billion) in the 2018-19 fiscal year. Amazon India and Flipkart reported net losses of 56.85 billion rupees ($790 million) and 38.37 billion rupees ($530 million), respectively.


For Indian e-commerce companies, the reason why they have spared no expense and launched a price war this year is that the epidemic has made the trend of e-commerce increasingly obvious in The Indian retail market. Before the outbreak, E-commerce and retail stores in India were two fronts, with competing interests. However, with the help of the epidemic, India's original retail model has been further developed in terms of digitization and closer integration with e-commerce. For e-commerce, the market is expanding further, and only competition can ensure the market position. Amazon and Flipkart are nervous that WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, is offering a payment service in India, while Facebook is an investor in Reliance's JioMart. WhatsApp has more than 400 million users in India, and the integration with JioMart will make JioMart more relevant to consumers and the market more effectively.


But Amazon won't stop there. The latest news is that Amazon will invest $2.8 billion to build multiple data centers in The Indian state of Telangana. The data centers will be operational by 2022.


For India's e-commerce development, 2020 is a watershed year: the old e-commerce landscape is collapsing and a new one is taking shape.