Amazon Prime Day sale turns out record numbers

Amazon Summer Sales
(Image credit: Amazon)

The Amazon Prime Day sale this year (August 6 and 7) seems to have beaten all kinds of record numbers, even outwitting the Diwali sale --- the biggest festival time sale in India. This year the focus was on the beleaguered SMBs.

According to Amazon, this year’s Prime Day sale saw the highest ever SMBs (Small and Medium business) participation, with over 91,000 SMBs, artisans, weavers and women entrepreneurs from over 5,900 pin codes pushing their wares. Of these, more than 62000 sellers were from non-metro and tier 2/3 cities across India. A total of 31,000 SMB sellers witnessed their highest sales ever with over 4000 SMB sellers each registering sales of Rs. 10 lakhs or more, and 209 SMB sellers becoming crorepatis during the 48 hours.

Artisans and weavers who sell their handmade collection through Amazon Karigar store witnessed a growth of 6.7X, and women entrepreneurs from the Saheli program witnessed a growth of 2.6X over average day sales. Similarly, startup brands under the Launchpad program grew by 2.1X over their average day sales. Over a thousand Local Shops from over 100 cities made their Prime Day debut, growing by 2X over average day sales. Over 1 million Prime members shopped from small businesses in the 14-day lead up to Prime Day, further helping them with their business revival, the press release said.

Amazon said there was a good response to new launches with 300 top brands and 150 unique products from SMB sellers. Buyers seemed to like brands like Milagrow robotic vacuum cleaners, Smart Saver pulse oximeter, Onida (HDLED TV), Boat 20000 mAh power bank, Trytook baking moulds, Samsung Galaxy (M31s), Liomes hand juicers among many others. 

This Prime Day saw members from over 97% pin codes of India shop across multiple categories. More than twice as many customers signed up for an Amazon Prime membership during Prime Day 2020 compared to the last Prime Day, with over 65% of new members from outside of the top 10 cities. Over 1 million Prime members shopped from small businesses in the 14-day lead up to Prime Day.

“This Prime Day was dedicated to our small business (SMB) partners, who have been increasingly looking to Amazon to keep their businesses running. Nearly 1 Lakh SMB sellers (70% from small towns) received orders from across 97% of India’s pin-codes,” said Amit Agarwal, SVP and Country Manager, Amazon India.

What did people buy?

Personal computing, large appliances, kitchen, smartphones, apparel and pantry categories were among those that saw the most success in terms of units sold. 

Given the lockdown scenario, understandably work/study from home purchase trends continued with people purchasing laptops, printers, monitors, TVs, wearables and storage. 

The top brands were HP, Lenovo, Dell, Asus, Intel, Mi in laptops; Samsung in tablets; Epson, HP, Canon in printers; LG in monitors; boAt, Sony, Bose and JBL in audio; Mi, Honor & Noise in wearables; Sony, Canon in cameras, Seagate and WD in data storage and TP Link in networking; in TVs the best-selling brands were One Plus, Mi, LG and Sony. 

Top selling brands in smartphones were OnePlus Nord 5G, OnePlus 7T series, Samsung Galaxy M31s, Samsung Galaxy M31, Samsung Galaxy M21, Redmi Note 9, Redmi Note 9 Pro Series, Redmi 9 Prime, Redmi 8A Dual, Apple iPhone 11, OPPO A5 2020, and Honor 9A. 

Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote was the number one bestseller on Prime Day. Customers bought as many Fire TV Stick devices on the first day of Prime Day this year versus the entire Prime Day event last year. 

The first day of Prime Day was the biggest day ever for Amazon Devices; Echo devices, Fire TV Stick and Kindle devices were favourites with members. The 2 weeks lead-up to Prime Day was Prime Video India’s best ever in terms of viewership, with the highest number of streamers enjoying the content on the service.

Balakumar K
Senior Editor

Over three decades as a journalist covering current affairs, politics, sports and now technology. Former Editor of News Today, writer of humour columns across publications and a hardcore cricket and cinema enthusiast. He writes about technology trends and suggest movies and shows to watch on OTT platforms.