Updated with information from Basicslife Updated with feedback from Paytm Tickets, HomeShop18 & Indiatimes Shopping Dec 13, 2013: Yesterday, Google India had partnered with around 90 eCommerce sites to launch the Great Online Shopping Festival, a 24 hours online shopping festival wherein the participating eCommerce ventures offered various deals to its consumers. Initially, it looked more like a marketing exercise and a ploy by eCommerce companies to sell their unsold inventory or capitalise on the Indian consumer's new found interest in the Black Friday or Cyber Monday initiatives that happens after the ThanksGiving holiday in the United States. And to a significant extent, it was a marketing exercise with very few impressive deals on offer yesterday, although we are a bit skeptical if it was able to achieve the goal of spreading awareness about online shopping in the country and incentivize Indian netizens to adopt online shopping, since the festival's marketing was limited to the web (correct us if we are wrong). Google India however claims that it has witnessed a significant amount of participation from first time online buyers looking for deals and making online purchases. It mentioned that all its partners had witnessed a significant growth in traffic and some of its partners had already sold out its stock by 3pm (15 hours after the festival started). Response from eCommerce Companies The company also provided a sneak peek at some of the responses seen by its partners like Myntra, HomeShop18, Indiatimes Shopping, Snapdeal and Pepperfry. We also checked with these and some other companies including…
