Flipkart notches up single-day sales record of Rs1,400 cr

Flipkart mopped up Rs1,400 crore on Monday, its highest-ever single day sales, giving India's largest online retailer a much-needed edge over American rival Amazon, which has been snapping at its heels with a massive war chest to woo the Indian market. This is more than twice what the Bengaluru-based e-retailer recorded as its peak sales in a single day last year.

Flipkart's co-founder and chief executive Binny Bansal told The Times of India in an interview that crossing the Rs1,000-crore mark was a milestone for the company, which began its existence by selling books nine years ago. It is the first instance of any of the domestic online retailer publicly sharing gross sales, or GMV, numbers during the sale season.

Both Amazon and Snapdeal have so far only put out units sold during their annual sale events, steering clear of giving out gross sales.

"This number is far more than what the modern Indian retail industry clocks daily (Rs1,070 crore), signalling the evolution of ecommerce and its adoption among consumers," said Bansal, who stepped into the chief executive position earlier this year.

Industry estimates suggest that collectively local e-retailers will garner around Rs12,000 crore in sales during the lucrative festive season against Rs7,000 crore a year ago, managing to grow the market significantly .

GMV is overall sales on an online marketplace, excluding discounts and returns, out of which e-ewtailers take a share ranging from 5-15 per cent as their margin. GMV had been the key metric for all e-retailers in India to show rapid growth and ratchet up their valuations in multi-billion-dollar fund-raises over the past two years. But with sales staying flat or declining, most ecommerce players are now starting to focus on returning customers.

A Snapdeal spokesperson said, "We do not track GMV as a metric of performance. In the first 16 hours of the sale on Day One, more than 11 lakh buyers bought 1.67 million products on Snapdeal. We recorded our highest ever sales by both volume and value on any single day , establishing a new record for ourselves."