People, brace yourselves for the most epic sales this festive season, thanks to Amazon and Flipkart

This festive season, e-commerce market giants, Amazon and Flipkart will only promote online-exclusive smartphone and consumer electronic models, as they aim to double their sales over the last year.

"The ecommerce marketplaces are structuring their Diwali offers and promotions solely on the online exclusive models across smartphones, televisions and large appliances. This will allow them to enjoy pricing advantage since brands with omni-channel presence and models will not fund online discounts, which the online exclusive brands would offer," a leading ecommerce seller on condition of anonymity, told ET.

According to the norms of FDI (foreign direct investment), marketplaces are prohibited from influencing prices and offering discounts.
As part of their strategy, the marketplaces will give priority listing to online exclusive models and extensively promote special deals offered by marketers through banner advertisements and searches, four senior executives of leading smartphone and television brands told ET.
“Other brands will have to pay for such promotions for their omnichannel models,” they further added.

“It makes sense for ecommerce firms to support brands heavily tilted on online sales. This will give the marketplaces a lot of leverage in not having to compete with offline retail,” Motorola India country head, Amit Boni told ET.

About 75% of total smartphone sales in e-commerce marketplaces are accounted by online exclusive models.

Trade estimates show that around 80-90% of their sales are still generated from ecommerce, even though some of the online exclusive smartphone brands like LeEco, Lenovo, Yu and Xiaomi have recently expanded into brick-and-mortar retail, trade estimates show that around 80-90% of their sales are still generated from ecommerce.