Alibaba’s Singles Day Sale Equals India’s Entire E-commerce Market: 6 Eye-Popping Facts
This year, Apple phones was bought more than Huawei, Xiaomi and Samsung phones by Chinese.
November 11th is celebrated as Single’s Day in China (11.11 or 4 single sticks denotes singles in China). Since 2009, Jack Ma from Alibaba started promoting Singles Day as a one-day sales extravaganza on their website, and ever since that, Singles Day has become one of the most powerful shopping days in the world.
This year, Alibaba broke their own record in total sales volume – And the number is almost the same as India’s entire ecommerce industry.
Besides Alibaba.com and AliExpress, Alibaba’s Southeast Asia unit Lazada, as well as subsidiaries Ele.me, Koubei, supermarket chain Hema participated in this mega-sale.
Here are 7 eye-popping numbers coming in, from the Singles Day shopping bonanza in China:
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The First 84 Seconds: $1 Billion Of Shopping
In this year’s Singles’ Day, Alibaba generated business of $1 billion or Rs 7200 crore in the first 85 seconds. That’s Rs 82 crore of orders per second.
$3 billion of sales was crossed in the first 5 minutes.
Overall Sales On Alibaba
This year, Alibaba generated a total of $31 billion in sales volume, which is highest till date. Last year, Alibaba generated $25 billion of sales on Singles Day, which now increased to $31 billion.
Within 15 hours and 49 minutes of the sales, last year’s record of $25 billion was broken.
However, the annual growth has been slow this year, compared to the last few years. While this year Alibaba saw 27% growth, last year, the growth was 36%.
Comparison With India’s E-commerce Industry
Last year total of $32 billion worth of goods was sold online in India, and this number includes Amazon, Flipkart and all other ecommerce portals. Both Amazon and Flipkart generated sales between $2-3 billion.
Hence, with sales of $31 billion in a single day, Alibaba has matched entire India’s yearly ecommerce revenues in a single day.
In the recently concluded Festive Day sales on Amazon and Flipkart, a total of $3 billion worth of products was sold on both of these platforms. In comparison, Alibaba sold $1 billion of product in the first 85 seconds.
If you are a Digital entrepreneur then you will realize the insanity of these numbers!
Singles Day Beats Black Friday, Cyber Monday
Black Friday and Cyber Monday are considered to be the biggest shopping days in the US. Last year, $5 billion of online sales was registered on Black Friday (November 24th last year) and $6.6 billion on Cyber Monday (November 27th last year).
Hence, Alibaba managed to not only beat both Black Friday and Cyber Monday but also churn out almost three times more sales.
Apple Was Preferred Over Xiaomi, Oppo, Samsung
In the phones department, Apple was the #1 brand which was chosen by Chinese during Singles’ Day sales on Alibaba. Huawei and Xiaomi were at #2 and #3 position respectively.
This is really interesting because Apple is struggling to ramp-up sales in China right now even as Xiaomi, Huawei and Oppo is snatching market share.
Apple was one of the brands which registered sale of more than 100 million yuan, or $14.5 million on Singles Day. Total of 237 brands breached 100 million yuan mark.
Which Products Were Most Sought After?
Health supplements were the most popular imported products bought on Alibaba.com. Products such as milk powder, facial masks and milk powder were also heavily bought.
Chinese living outside China bought a maximum of skin-care products. 3700 units of Singles’ Day special edition MAC lipsticks were sold in a second.
Brands which crossed 100 million yuan sales on Singles Day include Apple, Huawei, Siemens, Dyson, Nike, Uniqlo, Adidas, Procter & Gamble and more.
Overall, more than 1 billion units were ordered on Alibaba.com.
