Flipkart’s Big 10 sales are right around the corner and the company has high hopes regarding the same. Flipkart is confident enough that it expects to double its smartphone sales with the event. It even has a Buyback Guarantee program brewing which will be rolled out right before the Big 10 sales.
Smartphones are a high point for Flipkart. And the company starts churning out devices with a special intensity during events likes sales — like its upcoming Big 10 event. Speaking about the company’s March pilot run when it sold the Moto G5 devices (and first tested Buyback) Flipkart said that the program was an overall success. The company is planning to make the facility a permanent feature for smartphones after the Big 10 sale.
As the name implies, Buyback is a facility that lets customers sell their devices back to Flipkart for a pre-agreed upon price. This ensures that customers can sell off their devices to Flipkart and receive a substantial amount when they plan to purchase a new smartphone for themselves.
There will be a price of course. The facility was launched for Lenovo, Motorola, Vivo and Oppo models for INR 399. However, this particular price tag could be bumped up a couple of rungs once it extends to covering even more devices.
Speaking on the topic, Ayyappan Rajagopal, senior director of smartphones at Flipkart said:
This kind of program, along with other affordability programs (low cost EMI and other) will offer a 50-70% jump in sales in general, but during sale time, the increase in likely to be in the range of 2x to 2.5x.
He also said that the program will be offered across almost half the smartphone models during the sale. It will be valid for devices priced between INR 10,000 and INR 80,000. When customers decide that they want to give the smartphone back or exchange it for a new device, they will be offered anywhere between 35% and 50% of the MRP of the purchased phone.
There are condition of course. For instance, Buyback is only valid for a period between 6 to 8 months. Such programs have already existed across the US for higher priced iPhones — however, Flipkart is bringing it to the country for mid priced smartphones as well.
Considering that customers do tend to change their smartphones every eight or nine months or so, the Buyback program could just get them to get rid of their old devices and get new ones every six to eight months instead. So you see what is happening here? The customers are happy, because they get to turn in their old devices and get new ones at a discount. And Flipkart is happy, because people are buying new devices faster.
Smartphones already contribute to over half of Flipkart’s total revenue. With this buyback program, this figure could go up even further.
Directionally, we want to grow the online overall share from 35% to 50-55% over the next 12 months through these programs. All affordability programs put together will be able to give us close to 40-50% uplift (in market share) in the next six months, and this will rub off on the revenue.
