Brands, retailers bank on festive sales

The industry is hoping that deep discounts during the festive season, along with new product launches, and consumers’ looking to upgrade to 5G phones, will help make up for the sales lost during the first half of the year due to supply constraints and weak demand.

“With the 5G auction complete and telcos announcing plans to roll out 5G services, we believe this festive season will be a defining moment for 5G device adoption in India,” said Muralikrishnan B, president of Xiaomi India.

“We had a tough H1. We want to reverse all that with the festive sales and ensure that we exit the year on a high note,” he added.

Earlier this week, the Chinese smartphone maker launched a new 5G smartphone called Redmi 11 Prime 5G in the ₹10-15k segment, considered the “sweet spot for 5G adoption,” as per Muralikrishnan.

He said Xiaomi plans to offer big discounts, exchange offers, and cashbacks during the festive sales. It is also in talks with telcos to bundle data plans with 5G devices while offering discounts on smart TVs and smart home products. Meanwhile, Xiaomi’s native rival, Realme, is set to launch its Realme Festive Days sale on Thursday with ₹700 crore worth of offers.

Tarun Pathak, research director at Counterpoint Research said, “there is some pent-up demand as many consumers held onto their devices…” and “there will be upgrade offers around 5G, where users can buy 5G phones in exchange for 4G devices”.

Retailers are also preparing to capitalize on the festive period. “We expect this to be our biggest Big Billion Days sales and beat even last year’s record,” said Bharath Ram, senior vice-president, of user activation and retention at Flipkart. He said Flipkart has made design changes and added new features to its mobile app to lift user experience during the festive sales.

On the offline side, Nilesh Gupta, director at electronics retail chain Vijay Sales, said the company’s encouraging sales programme during the Independence Day has fuelled expectations for “the best festive season sales” this year.

He added that while discounts offered are more or less the same in online and offline channels this year, consumers can expect longer EMI tenures for buying from retail stores.

Post your comment
First article