Small-town consumers, luxury purchases, and GST savings drove Amazon’s fastest festive launch to date.
With 38 crore visitors in the first two days of its inauguration, the Amazon Great Indian Festival 2025, the e-commerce behemoth‘s premier annual festival season sale event, has gotten off to its best start ever.
With over 70% of the traffic originating from outside India’s top nine metros, the business claimed that this was the largest opening in the event’s history.
Volumes are driven by GST savings
The #GSTBachatUtsav shop, where vendors handed on GST advantages worth crores, has become this year’s high point. The drive seems to have paid off, as sales of inverter batteries quadrupled, dishwashers and air conditioners both witnessed double-digit year-over-year increases, and sales of eco-friendly kitchen equipment increased by 50% over the previous year.
Additionally, groceries and necessities increased, with high-protein meals up 27% and drinks, oils, and cereals rising 15%. With whey protein up 28% and vitamins and supplements up 39%, health and wellness shown significant momentum.
The 2025 Amazon Great Indian Festival gets off to an unprecedented start. “Sellers have passed on GST advantages worth crores in only 48 hours,” demonstrating how well-received the #GSTBachatUtsav program has been.”
In smaller communities, premiumization is spreading
The most impressive categories were the premium ones. Over Rs 20,000 smartphones increased 50% year over year, while QLED TVs and Mini-LEDs increased 23% and 27%, respectively. Sales of laptops increased dramatically, with the MacBook Air M4 selling 94 times as many as it typically does. Premium watches doubled, while the Sony Home Theater System sold 196 times as many as it used to.
The same was true for jewelry and accessories: lab-grown diamonds increased tenfold, valuable jewelry and silver coins increased four and a half times, and Korean cosmetics increased more than triple. Premium baggage increased 94%, clothing from leading brands doubled and a half, and professional beauty and haircare grew 2.5 times. Tier 2 and Tier 3 customers accounted for a large portion of this premium demand.
Additionally, the business said that this was their quickest event to date. With over 30 lakh things arriving to metro purchasers the same or next day and over 50 lakh sent to smaller towns within 48 hours, Prime members received over 80 lakh products in only two days.
Small enterprises achieve new benchmarks
The other major beneficiaries seem to be sellers, especially SMBs. Sales for more than 16,000 small and medium-sized enterprises increased over the course of a typical day. Ajmer, Howrah, Rajkot, Udupi, Ghaziabad, and other smaller cities accounted for two-thirds of the participating vendors. According to Amazon, this was the most SMBs to ever reach the Rs 10 lakh mark at a festival launch.
“My company has seen a complete transformation in the first 48 hours of the Amazon Great Indian Festival 2025,” said Abhishek Dhanwani of Rajasthan Kraft India, a festive décor vendor headquartered in Ajmer. “We got orders from clients all throughout India, from big cities to tiny communities, and we saw a 7X rise in our daily sales volume.”
Savings of Rs 260 crore with Pay and cards
In the first two days, SBI debit and credit card users saved over Rs 260 crore. Among consumers, one in four utilized Amazon Pay, one in five made purchases on EMI, and UPI transactions increased by 18% over the previous year. Four of the five were free EMI programs, mostly for appliances and mobile phones.
Another noteworthy new development sector was travel. With prices ranging from Rs 1,403 for a Delhi–Bhatinda journey to Rs 4.5 lakh for a Mumbai–London ticket, international flight reservations increased by 45% year over year.
Boom in bulk orders
Additionally, Amazon Business reported record-breaking activity, with bulk purchases increasing 4.4 times above typical business days and new client sign-ups increasing sixfold.
Gurinder Sukhija, Senior Vice President and Head of Sales and Ownership Management at Ather, said, “Our collaboration with Amazon has gotten off to a great start.” “The early sales momentum has been really promising, and the reach and convenience that Amazon provides have allowed us to interact with an even larger range of clients.”
The festive spirit is still going strong
Beginning on September 22 for Prime members and September 23 for other consumers, the Great Indian Festival will continue until Diwali.
Amazon is speculating that the 2025 season may change India’s holiday shopping curve because of unprecedented traffic, premium purchases from smaller locations, and billions saved via GST and card incentives.