New Delhi: Walmart Inc.-owned Flipkart has revised the dates of its The Big Billion Days sale to start a day before Amazon’s Great Indian Festival, setting the stage—yet again—for an epic e-commerce clash.

On Tuesday, Flipkart had announced that the eighth edition of Big Billion Days will be held from October 7-12. That now stands revised to October 3-10, according to an internal memo. Amazon India
will host its month-long Great Indian Festival from October 4. Separately, Flipkart Group company Myntra has announced its ‘Big Fashion Festival’ from October 3-10.

According to PTI sources, the new Big Billion Day dates are expected to be updated on Flipkart’s website and app soon. Sellers are also being communicated about the change in dates, they added.

The Big Billion Days is critical for lakhs of sellers as they continue to strive to revitalise their businesses after the pandemic, Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy said in a communication to employees. The event also generates a massive scale of employment across the supply chain—helping make “the festivities a reality for numerous households”, he said.

“We have the potential to make a deep positive impact on the lives of everyone who engages with us, and keeping this in mind, we are standing true to Flipkart’s values, being audacious, biased to action and customer centricity and have decided to make this Big Billion Days bigger for all stakeholders!,” Krishnamurthy said in the communication. “To enable this, we are going to make some changes to our plans for the Big Billion Days 2021.”

Queries emailed by PTI to Flipkart did not elicit a response.

This isn’t the first time Amazon and Flipkart have contested over festive season sales. Their sale events offer great deals, new launches and attractive payment options like EMI offers via various partnerships. Multiple sale events also take place to coincide with the Dussehra and Diwali festivities.

To be sure, festive season sales are the most critical event in an e-commerce platform’s calendar from the sales point of view. They make significant investments ahead of time to ramp up capacity and add features to be able to handle the spike in orders, while ensuring a smooth experience for shoppers and sellers.

According to RedSeer Consulting, India’s ecommerce sales during the upcoming festive season
are likely to grow by nearly a quarter over the previous year to $9 billion. For the full year, the overall net gross merchandise value is expected to touch $49-52 billion, or 37% higher than last year’s $38.2 billion.

With inputs from PTI.