Small towns perform big! Nearly 70 pct orders in Snapdeal sale received by sellers located beyond top 5 metropolitan areas

Snapdeal has concluded its “Kum Mein Dum” Diwali sale, during which the e-commerce platform gave several deals and discounts on products across categories. The small town sellers witnessed a surge in orders, helping their businesses. As per the data revealed by Snapdeal, nearly 70% of the orders were received by sellers located beyond the top 5 metropolitan areas of the country. These include sellers in major non-metro commercial hubs like Jaipur, Surat, Ahmedabad, Coimbatore who receive a large volume of orders every year, including in the festive season. 

However, what has been different this year is the steady flow of orders also to sellers in smaller centres like Avinashi in Tamil Nadu for textiles, Palitana in Gujarat for footwear, Rewa in Madhya Pradesh for gaming accessories, Muktsar in Punjab for herbal products, Birlapur in West Bengal for home decor products etc.  

Sellers located in Delhi NCR, Mumbai Metropolitan region, Kolkata, Chennai & Bengaluru accounted for nearly 30% of the total sale orders. The dominance of sellers from smaller cities is a reflection of the main-streaming of e-commerce as an option amongst the MSMEs in India, Snapdeal said.  

It added that more than 90% of Snapdeal’s orders were placed from non-metro cities. At the conclusion of the sale, buyers from 3700+ towns across India (accounting for 92% of India’s ~ 4000 towns & cities) bought on Snapdeal. 4 out of  every 10 orders placed on Snapdeal were by first time users, which is consistent with the fast adoption of e-commerce by new users. During the pandemic, Snapdeal added 6Mn + new users on its platform - a trend that accelerated in the festive season. 

Another interesting trend is that 80% buyers chose a regional or a local brand for their Diwali purchases vis-a-vis 20% who opted  for national & international brands. The comparable percentage was 65% & 35% respectively last festive season. 

The strong growth of lesser-known brands relative to national / international brands was because of two key reasons: increased choice and a substantial price difference.