E-comm orders show signs of recovery

Albeit the sales of non-essential items on e-commerce platforms in the first week of May were lower than last year on account of lockdown, orders of these commodities in orange and green zones are gradually scaling back to pre-lockdown level. In the red zones like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune and Hyderabad, which also happen to be major e-commerce hubs, e-commerce companies can still ship only essential items.

One of the signs that there has been a growth in the demand of these items over the 40 day lockdown period is that conversions (from visitors to buyers) were more than double of pre-lockdown average. “Our order volumes grew rapidly and swiftly reached 50 per cent of pre-lockdown volumes within five days of expanded operations. Compared year-on-year, the order volumes for the first 9 days of May 2020 was 52 per cent of volumes in the same period last year,” a Snapdeal spokesperson commented. 

Some of the non-essential products that are seeing lots of demand include apparel; electronic items like smartphones, chargers, extension cords; grooming products like trimmers; indoor games like chess & carom; and stationery items like books. Home use category like utensils, mixers and grinders, mops and brooms, and mosquito nets also saw high sale.