THE BIG BILLION DAY- MY VIEW
All you people out there would have heard of the Big billion day sale announced by India's leading e-commerce company Flipkart. This blog is all about my view and justifications for the same, as I made some big time purchases on the 6th of Oct 2014.Well first to begin with I was totally happy with the sincere effort made by Flipkart.
But since the day of the “Big Billion Day” Sale I have seen nothing on my news feed except articles, posts, open letters, memes, accusations flung into Flipkart’s face telling them how they’ve let us down. You know what, I think it’s pathetic. I think it so pathetic that people can’t get over this. How many of us know what a server is? A server is a running instance of an application (Software) capable of accepting requests from the client and giving responses accordingly.The load on their server led to intermittent outages, further impacting the shopping experience on the site. An unprecedented 1.5 million people shopped at Flipkart on that day, which is way beyond their server can handle.
Do you know how difficult it is to set up a company with about 6000 people if not more, which is constantly expanding? Expanding so much that they have to shift offices or rent new places every few months?
People talk about how Flipkart is a homegrown product/service and that we had faith in it, and now it’s gone. That’s NONSENSE. They have their back against the wall. Amazon is trying to take over the market, they’re putting in money like crazy just trying to compete. Instead of helping Flipkart out, at this crucial stage, when they just wanted to try something new, take a plunge, you’re going to criticize, because all you people out there can handle 6000(approx) people working for you. Because all you people out there can manage servers (and know what a server is) and I’m sure everyone of you has the guts to do something as massive as this even though the stakes, the risks, and the investment are so high.
I want to see Amazon and Flipkart battling it out, and to be honest I’m rooting for the home team. Amazon is good, sure. But you know what, Flipkart has bigger guts. Amazon just has tons of money.Everything that they have achieved at Flipkart is purely on the basis of their customer's trust and faith. This is why they continue to remain extremely passionate about building the best possible customer experience for Indian consumers.
Guys mistakes do happen, But trying something this big and risky on a country where everybody is pessimistic on new efforts is something gutsy and amazing.Imagine a situation where Domino's comes up with a campaign “Ten Minutes Nahi to Free”. You’re all going to order and do the same thing to them. Ungrateful people we have in this country who don’t appreciate that there are people far better and far more smart taking bigger risks than many, and sure they've let some people down but they TRIED.These guys took on Amazon who are one of the oldest and biggest in the business, and they’re battling it out everyday. I’m a nobody, but I say that we get over it and help them.
Sachin and Binny Bansal,worried Jeff Bezos so much that he had to fly to India a few days ago. I like that. As I know that I could never do what you guys are doing and I respect that.
---This was the mail I received from flipkart after on 7th oct,
Dear Customer,
Yesterday was a big day for us. And we really wanted it to be a great day for you. But at the end of the day, we know that your experience was less than pleasant. We did not live up to the promises we made and for that we are really and truly sorry.
It took enormous effort from everyone at Flipkart, many months of preparation and pushing our capabilities and systems to the limit to be able to create this day. We were looking at fulfilling the dreams of millions of Indian consumers through deals and offers we had painstakingly put together for months.
And though we saw unprecedented interest in our products and traffic like never before, we also realized that we were not adequately prepared for the sheer scale of the event. We didn't source enough products and deals in advance to cater to your requirements. To add to this, the load on our server led to intermittent outages, further impacting your shopping experience on our site.
An unprecedented 1.5 million people shopped at Flipkart yesterday. While we stand humbled by the sheer faith that such a large number of customers have shown in us, we are unhappy that we were unable to live up to the expectations of millions more who wanted to buy from us yesterday.
And this is not acceptable to us.
Delighting you, and every single one of our customers, is absolutely the top most priority for Flipkart and we have worked very hard over the last seven years to earn your trust. Yesterday, we failed that trust. We have learnt some valuable lessons from this and have started working doubly hard to address all the issues that cropped up during this sale.
Price Changes As we were preparing various deals and promotional pricing in the lead up to the sale, the pricing of several products got changed to their non-discounted rates for a few hours. We realise that this breaks the trust our customers have put in us. We are truly sorry for this and will ensure that this never happens again.
Out-of-stock Issues We ran out of the stock for many products within a few minutes (and in some cases, seconds) of the sale going live. For example, most of our special deals were sold out as soon as they went live. We had ensured availability, anywhere from hundreds to a few lakh units for various products, but it was nowhere near the actual demand. We promise to plan much better for future promotions and ensure that we minimise the out-of-stock issues.
Cancellations We had large number of people buying specific products simultaneously. This led to some instances of an order getting over-booked for a product that was sold out just a few seconds ago. We are working round-the-clock to ensure availability of additional units for these products and will do our level best to ensure that we minimise any cancellations.
Website Issues We realise that the shopping experience for many of you was frustrating due to errors and unavailability of the website at times. We had deployed nearly 5000 servers and had prepared for 20 times the traffic growth - but the volume of traffic at different times of the day was much higher than this. We are continuing to significantly scale up all our back end systems so that we do a much, much better job next time.
Everything that we have achieved at Flipkart is purely on the basis of our customer's trust and faith. This is why we come to work each day and continue to remain extremely passionate about building the best possible customer experience for Indian consumers. We failed to live up to this promise yesterday and would like to apologize once again to every single customer for our failure.
Thank you.
Sachin and Binny
Yesterday was a big day for us. And we really wanted it to be a great day for you. But at the end of the day, we know that your experience was less than pleasant. We did not live up to the promises we made and for that we are really and truly sorry.
It took enormous effort from everyone at Flipkart, many months of preparation and pushing our capabilities and systems to the limit to be able to create this day. We were looking at fulfilling the dreams of millions of Indian consumers through deals and offers we had painstakingly put together for months.
And though we saw unprecedented interest in our products and traffic like never before, we also realized that we were not adequately prepared for the sheer scale of the event. We didn't source enough products and deals in advance to cater to your requirements. To add to this, the load on our server led to intermittent outages, further impacting your shopping experience on our site.
An unprecedented 1.5 million people shopped at Flipkart yesterday. While we stand humbled by the sheer faith that such a large number of customers have shown in us, we are unhappy that we were unable to live up to the expectations of millions more who wanted to buy from us yesterday.
And this is not acceptable to us.
Delighting you, and every single one of our customers, is absolutely the top most priority for Flipkart and we have worked very hard over the last seven years to earn your trust. Yesterday, we failed that trust. We have learnt some valuable lessons from this and have started working doubly hard to address all the issues that cropped up during this sale.
Price Changes As we were preparing various deals and promotional pricing in the lead up to the sale, the pricing of several products got changed to their non-discounted rates for a few hours. We realise that this breaks the trust our customers have put in us. We are truly sorry for this and will ensure that this never happens again.
Out-of-stock Issues We ran out of the stock for many products within a few minutes (and in some cases, seconds) of the sale going live. For example, most of our special deals were sold out as soon as they went live. We had ensured availability, anywhere from hundreds to a few lakh units for various products, but it was nowhere near the actual demand. We promise to plan much better for future promotions and ensure that we minimise the out-of-stock issues.
Cancellations We had large number of people buying specific products simultaneously. This led to some instances of an order getting over-booked for a product that was sold out just a few seconds ago. We are working round-the-clock to ensure availability of additional units for these products and will do our level best to ensure that we minimise any cancellations.
Website Issues We realise that the shopping experience for many of you was frustrating due to errors and unavailability of the website at times. We had deployed nearly 5000 servers and had prepared for 20 times the traffic growth - but the volume of traffic at different times of the day was much higher than this. We are continuing to significantly scale up all our back end systems so that we do a much, much better job next time.
Everything that we have achieved at Flipkart is purely on the basis of our customer's trust and faith. This is why we come to work each day and continue to remain extremely passionate about building the best possible customer experience for Indian consumers. We failed to live up to this promise yesterday and would like to apologize once again to every single customer for our failure.
Thank you.
Sachin and Binny
I don’t work for Flipkart, nor am I being paid for this,but this explains their humbleness and desire to grow But I am sick and tired of hearing about this for so many days.So next time when an attempt as big as this is made make sure you support them and help them get back up if they fall, after all they are one of the few Indian companies who deal with Indians.Lets not let Amazon take over the Indian e-commerce market and start feeding the Americans.
I know many won't stand by me on this view, but I feel its the correct way to look at the issue and I stand by my view.
Comment are invited..
