Amazon’s ‘Great Indian Festival’ started on October 17 and will go on for about a month to coincide with the festive season. Amazon Prime members were provided early access to the sale from October 16.

E-commerce major Amazon India on Sunday said over 1.1 lakh sellers on its platform received orders during the first 48 hours of its ‘Great Indian Festival‘ sale, with a bulk of orders coming from smaller parts of the country.

Amazon’s ‘Great Indian Festival’ started on October 17 and will go on for about a month to coincide with the festive season. Amazon Prime members were provided early access to the sale from October 16.

“These 48 hours were the biggest ever for Amazon in its seven-year history. We had created a buildup for the sale for our Amazon sellers…Over 1.1 lakh sellers received orders, and 66per cent of them came from small towns,” Amazon India Vice President Manish Tiwary told .

Amazon India, which has over 6.5 lakh sellers on its platform, registered its biggest spike in new customers, with 91per cent of them coming from small towns (beyond the metros and top 40 cities), he added.

About 66per cent of new Prime sign-ups were also from small towns like Tawang and Changlang (Arunachal Pradesh), Mokokchung (Nagaland), Baran (Rajasthan), Pudukkottai (Tamil Nadu), Una (Himachal Pradesh) and Jaunpur (Uttar Pradesh), Tiwari said.

The trends seen by Amazon India are similar to those witnessed by Flipkart.

Walmart-owned Flipkart, which opened its ‘Big Billion Days‘ (BBD) sale on October 16, had said 50per cent of new customers on its platform who shopped on the first day of its sale were from tier-3 cities and beyond.

Smaller rival Snapdeal had said nearly 30per cent of the total orders on the first day (October 16) of its sale were from first-time users and nearly 90per cent of orders were from tier II and III towns.