India Went on an E-Shopping Spree.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-10-08/india-went-on-an-e-shopping-spree

The great powers of India’s rising e-commerce sector (including newbie Amazon) locked horns to spectacular effect this week, agitating customers, brick-and-mortar businesses, computer servers, payment platforms and even themselves to levels never seen before.

Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal all held a day of impossibly deep discounts Monday to kick off the festive season in India, which lasts through November. Together, they sparked one of the biggest shopping sprees in Indian e-commerce history and signaled a breakout moment for the sector, which still accounts for less than 1 percent of all retail expenditures in India. But it has picked up quickly in the last five years, growing 88 percent last year to $16 billion -- still a small figure by the standards of the world’s developed economies, yet big enough to heat up the market.

Matters finally came to a head this week, with Flipkart’s “Big Billion Day” sale ads flooding the pages of major Indian newspapers. Amazon’s response alluded to India’s recent successes in space with its “Mission to Mars” campaign, while Snapdeal tried to play it coolwith a pitch that ran with the tagline “For others it’s a big day. For us, today it is no different.”

It was hard not to feel the love. Shoppers rose early Monday to grab the best deals, and goods flew off the virtual shelves. Among the discounted items that sold out fastest were smartphones, thanks tothe wallets and consumer habits of India’s burgeoning middle class and aspirational youth. Millions of Indians under 50 today revel in the pleasures of a two-decade-old consumer society.