Online Shopping Festival by Google

Google India has come up with the second edition of “Great Online Shopping Festival”, a mega online shopping festival which brings all the leading ecommerce players in India on a common platform to provide the best deals available on the web. Backed by the tremendous response last year, this year the mega shopping bonanza will be for three days starting on 11/12/2013 till 13/12/2013. In its second year, the industry wide initiative will see participation from over 200 partners offering their best deals to customers across India for 72 hours. From leading ecommerce players, local & classified companies, online travel sites, auto companies, telecom companies, fashion labels, health and wellbeing companies, to banking financial Services the initiative will offer incredible discounts and deals for everyone.

The initiative was launched by Google last year to boost the adoption of online shopping in India and saw tremendous response with most players seeing over 350 percent growth in daily sales. The festival saw participation from all over India with 50 percent buyers making a online purchase for the first time. Speaking about the momentum of online shopping in India, Rajan Anandan, VP & Managing Director, Google India said, “Great Online shopping festival is India’s version of cyber Monday in the west and is an exciting platform to raise awareness and consumer adoption of online shopping in India. With over 200 million Internet users in the country, more and more Internet users are opting to shop online and fueling the growth of both large multinational and homegrown companies. Industry estimates suggests that there are close to 20 million online shoppers in India and its estimated to grow to 50 million in next few years making it a 16 billion dollar industry.”

Buyers can look forward to exciting deals across categories. Great Online shopping festival promises to offer something for everyone with great discounts on footwear, imported cars, property deals, holiday packages, insurance, spa packages, event tickets, grocery coupons, books, jewellery etc. Buyers can find discounts ranging from 20% up to 80% in many categories. Upto 60% off on luxury watches, 20% off on air tickets on domestic routes, upto 50 % off on speakers, headphones and men’s accessories, upto 80% off on home decor, flat 40% off on furniture, upto 50% off on TVs, up to 40% on mobile phones, upto 45% computers and tablets, upto 30% on cameras, 40% off on men’s footwear and many more.
“As new Internet users come aboard, we continue to see a very healthy growth in online searches for online shopping, with over 40 percent queries coming from mobile phones. We have extended the festival to three days to cater to the growing demand and hope to attract many first time buyers this year. Last year’s success helped us to get onboard many partners across verticals and products, who have all lined up incredible deals for the bargain hunters and first time buyers. We are hopeful that the initiative will help our partners to set new benchmarks in daily sales and help to build consumer awareness and confidence in online shopping” ,said Nitin Bawankule, Industry Director eCommerce, Google India .

The initiative is also supported by three new partners to help create awareness about online shopping and drive user participation for GOSF. Airtel, Intel and Paytm are the preferred partners for the initiative. Apart from promoting the initiative, Airtel will also offer a flat 10% cashback on all online transactions on top of the other offers by participating websites to customers who transact using Airtel money. And to help people connect to the internet, Airtel is giving away a free dongle on new 4G and a free Wifi modem on new broadband connections.