Festive Optimism Prevails: Online Sellers Expected to Buck the Trend in a Tough Year

• Redseer surveyed sellers (primarily the smaller sellers) prior to the festive sales 2023
• After a rocky first 3 quarters of the year CY23, online sellers expect at least a 15% jump in Festive sales y-o-y (median sales jump expected being 26%)
• Driven by this seller bullishness, they are expected to ramp up their ad spendings on the online platforms meaningfully – by atleast 15% vs last year’s festive period and at least 50% vs BAU period of this year
• Sellers continue to show strong belief in the long-term power and impact of eCommerce owing to better revenue growth, lower cost and higher profits amongst ~95% of surveyed sellers

Bengaluru, 29 Sep 2023: The latest report by Redseer Strategy Consultants on the Indian festive season, reveals the market readiness and seller’s bullish sentiments for a profitable festive season.

After a rocky first 3 quarters of the year CY23, online, sellers expect atleast a 15% jump in Festive sales y-o-y

Redseer surveyed a few hundred sellers (primarily the smaller sellers) prior to the festive sales 2023. Our findings show that despite modest sales growth on e-commerce platforms recently (only 40% of sellers we surveyed reported a >10% increase in current quarter sales vs JFM 23 quarter), anticipation for a festive sales boost amongst the sellers is high across categories.

Sellers expect a minimum 15% online sales growth vs last year’s festive event, with the median growth figure of 26% sales increase expected. Sellers across the categories including in the lower ASP ones like fashion are bullish about this growth trajectory, which should provide a respite in this otherwise challenging macro-environment.

e-Commerce platforms are tailoring solutions to meet the optimism of sellers and as a consequence of which, seller perceptions around support provided by eTailing platforms have seen an uptick – with 62% of sellers agreeing with the sentiment that the platforms have been supportive in their festive planning vs. 53% sellers who observed this in the lead-up to the last year’s festive season. Through our surveys, sellers have highlighted the strong support received from platforms in terms of data analytics, trends predictions, consumer visibility, among others.

Driven by this seller bullishness, they are expected to ramp up their ad spendings on the online platforms meaningfully- creating the right sales impact for themselves and also benefiting the platforms

Our survey results indicate that sellers are willing to spend more on marketing/advertising during the festive season on online platforms to drive sales growth. Overall, across the surveyed sellers, they anticipate a 15% spending growth vs last year’s festive season and 50% ad spending growth vs business as usual (BAU) periods of this year.

Interestingly, smaller sellers are highly willing to spend on ads and bullish on overall sales growth- smaller sellers anticipate a 22% ad spend growth vs last festive season and 75% growth vs BAU period of this year per our surveys.

“Our interactions with seller prior to this 10^th eCommerce festive season reaffirms the transformative impact eCommerce has on these MSMEs. The festive period is expected to enable sellers especially the smaller ones to come out of the challenging sales environment seen through this and sellers are optimistic of strong sales growth. Accordingly, they are willing to significantly ramp up their advertising spending on the ecommerce platforms during this festive period. In the longer term, more and more sellers will continue to benefit from eCommerce growth given its strong positive impact on seller topline and bottomline that emerges from our research”, says Mrigank Gutgutia, Partner at Redseer Strategy Consultants.