Brick & mortar not seeing much impact

Though e-commerce portals have announced a slew of discounted sales, physical retailers say they aren't feeling the heat yet. While Flipkart has started a'Big Billion Days' sale, Snapdeal has come out with a'Diwali Sale' and Amazon has launched the'Great Indian Festive Sale', between October 13 and 17.

"We are seeing good sales across categories. Shoppers are coming to us for the latest models and styles,” says Rakesh Biyani, joint managing director at Future Retail, India's second-largest retailer.

Earlier, Biyani had said he expected double-digit growth in this festive season. Future has been running a 45-day shopping festival from October 1.

Shashwat Goenka, retail sector head of the RP Sanjiv Goenka group, said their retail chain, Spencer's, had seen good numbers in the first week of October.  

"We have not seen any significant impact on the business (due to online discounted sales). The eastern region is doing very well, as Puja celebrations are big here,” he said.

Spencer's would hold a three-four day shopping event during Durga Puja and Diwali, he said.  Pure-play mobile phone retailers say they have already factored in the impact of online retailers.

"We (mobile phone retailers) are used to it (the impact of online sales),” said Subhash Chandra, managing director of the Bengaluru-based Sangeetha Mobiles. He added there was contraction of 10 per cent in physical retailing of mobile phones.

"Online retailers are incurring heavy losses and we believe things will settle down and sanity will prevail. Online cannot provide you touch, feel, personal attention and so on,” he said.

He said Sangeetha has come out with a festive offer wherein the chain will bear the entire interest cost of mobile phone purchase if they are bought on instalments. It has also come out with an unique scheme wherein the chain will protect the customer from price loss if the price of a phone is dropped within a month of purchase.