Bengaluru: India’s largest e-commerce company Flipkart Ltd said it reported a 400% increase in daily unit sales of household items such as towels, bulbs and small appliances as well as furniture products over the past weekend when it held a widely advertised sale of such products.

Flipkart said it sold as many home and furniture products over the two-day weekend sale as it usually does in one week.

The company launched home items last January and now claims to sell “a substantial part” of all home products sold online. The market for home items is estimated at $20 billion, of which roughly 5% is sold online, according to Flipkart.

“We launched home last year as we had identified it as one of the gaps in our offering; now it’s one of the fastest growing categories for Flipkart,” said Anil Goteti, vice president, business. “Our goal over the next two years is to maintain our large market share in this category.”

The company also said furniture sales have grown at the rate of 12% month-on-month since it launched the category in August. It offers sofas, beds and other furniture products in some 85 cities.

Flipkart has tied up with local furniture retailers such as Hometown as well as some international brands such as Stanley Furniture. Flipkart competes with specialty online furniture retailers such as Urban Ladder and Pepperfy as well as Snapdeal and Amazon.

“We’ve seen a significant uptick in sales since we launched furniture in August. Customers are responding very well to discounts and promotions. When combined with the good designs that we offer, demand for furniture has been very strong,” Goteti said.

Furniture and other home products is a relatively new and high-priced product category for online retailers. While the top two categories of fashion and electronics are very crowded and intensely competitive, home products is one of the newer categories that is expected to help drive sales growth this year for e-commerce firms.

Last week, Flipkart said it become the first e-commerce company in India to reach the milestone of 50 million downloads of its mobile app.

[“source-Livemint”]