Flipkart doesn’t want to bungle up ‘Big Billion Day’ sale in October, many changes expected

Flipkart has started planning for its ‘Big Billion Day’ mega sale event slated for first week in October and is planning a slew of changes to avoid mismanagement.

This time around, Flipkart may introduce loans for customers on the lines of ‘buy now-pay later’ model. It is also aiming to have a larger control over deliveries and customer service.

"BBD (Big Billion Day) was earlier planned for 15-16 October but Flipkart has preponed it to the first day/week of October. What's being discussed right now is that the first BBD will be the big one, followed by medium and small BBDs," ET quoted sources as saying.

The magnitude of this year's Big Billion Day will depend on how many sellers and brands Flipkart is able to get on board for the event and how much they are willing to discount, ET quoted a source as saying.

In 2014, Flipkart’s first ‘Big Billion Day’ sale garnered $100 million, however, the India’s largest online marketplace drew flak over mishandling of volumes of orders and traffic on its website.

To handle the traffic, Flipart has overhauled its online marketing budget.

"Flipkart is in talks with several banks to disburse these loans, which will be underwritten by it. Flipkart is launching its loans product just to promote repeat purchases during BBD and win back the Metros," a second source told ET.

Kalyan Krishnamurthy who has rejoined Flipkart as head of category management is going to handle the mega sale event.

"During the festival season last year, Flipkart was the clear market leader but now Amazon has overtaken Snapdeal and is close behind Flipkart," Mrigank Gutgutia, engagement manager at internet consulting firm RedSeer, told ET, adding “this festive season could make it amply clear who is the market leader between Flipkart and Amazon."