Why Brand Websites Grew 30 Percent While Marketplaces Grew 8 Percent This Festive Season

Posted on 12th Nov 2026 11:13:05 in Business, Digital Marketing

Tagged as: festive e-commerce, Datum Intelligence, quick commerce, brand websites, marketplaces, online sellers, India retail

India's festive online shopping season has closed with a headline number that looks healthy and a channel mix that matters far more to a small seller. Datum Intelligence's Festive Barometer 2026 estimates festive online sales at about Rs 1,40,800 crore over 34 sale days ending November 9, up 17 percent from Rs 1,20,000 crore in 2025.

Underneath that total, demand moved. Orders through quick commerce platforms rose 75 percent year on year. Orders on brand websites grew 27 to 30 percent. Orders through marketplaces - the Amazon, Flipkart and Meesho storefronts where most small sellers still earn their money - grew 8 percent. The channel with the most sellers grew the slowest.

That gap is the most useful number in the report for anyone running a small business. It says the festive shopper has not stopped buying. She is buying in different places, in smaller amounts, more often, and later in the season.

The Headline Numbers

• Festive online GMV: about Rs 1,40,800 crore over 34 sale days through November 9, 2026.
• Growth: 17 percent year on year, against Rs 1,20,000 crore in 2025, when the window ran 30 days.
• Forecast miss: the final figure landed Rs 9,200 crore to Rs 14,200 crore below Datum's own September outlook of Rs 1,50,000 crore to Rs 1,55,000 crore. The firm described it as the slowest festive growth since 2023.
• Channel split: quick commerce orders up 75 percent, brand websites up 27 to 30 percent, marketplace orders up 8 percent.
• Average card payment: about Rs 5,970, down 13 percent from Rs 6,830.
• Late surge: the fourth week and the final four days together grew 71 percent over the same period last year.

Where the Growth Actually Came From

Quick commerce's 75 percent order growth is the fastest number in the report, and it comes off a base that is still smaller than the marketplaces. Ten-minute delivery now works as a discovery and fulfilment layer inside grocery, personal care, home care, snacks and small electronics. For a brand that sells something people re-buy, that shelf has become a growth channel rather than an experiment. It also explains part of the marketplace slowdown: a shopper who orders groceries and shampoo at 11 pm on a quick commerce app is not opening a marketplace app to do it.

Brand websites were the second surprise. A 27 to 30 percent rise in orders on a brand's own site, in a season when marketplace order growth was 8 percent, suggests that shoppers who already know a brand are increasingly willing to buy from it directly. That demand does not arrive by itself. It usually follows a brand that runs its own festive offer, has a checkout that works on a mid-range phone, accepts UPI, states a delivery date and answers on WhatsApp when something goes wrong.

Marketplaces still carry the bulk of the volume. An 8 percent order increase on that base is not a collapse; it is a maturing channel. Datum's own framing is blunt: "Growth now comes from reach and frequency; the big-ticket basket is shrinking." For a seller, reach and frequency mean more first-time buyers, more repeat orders and more small parcels, not one large order from a customer who found you on day one.

The Average Basket Got Smaller

Card data cited in the report makes the shift visible. The number of online card transactions rose 7 percent over the first 32 sale days, but their total value fell 6 percent. The average card payment dropped 13 percent to about Rs 5,970 from Rs 6,830. "Smaller payments explain the whole value gap," the report said.

Translated for a seller: more people paid, and each paid less. Order volume rose fast enough to lift the total, but the average transaction shrank. Any plan that carries forward last year's average order value, last year's free-shipping threshold and last year's ad cost per order will overstate what the season actually delivers. A 13 percent smaller average payment is a margin event before it is a revenue event.

This is also where packaging and shipping economics turn. More orders of smaller value mean more parcels, more pick-and-pack labour and more last-mile cost per rupee of sales. Sellers who priced shipping on last year's basket sizes found the season tighter than the growth number suggests.

Smartphones Were the Drag

Mobile phones contributed around 25 percent of festive GMV this year, down from 35.2 percent in 2025. Online smartphone volumes declined 25 to 33 percent even as average selling prices rose 16 to 19 percent, partly because of higher memory costs, and the value of phone sales fell around 15 percent. Datum estimates that without this contraction, overall festive growth would have been about 22 percent instead of 17 percent.

The lesson is not to chase phones. It is that everyday categories - grocery, beauty and personal care, home, apparel and small appliances - carried the season. A small seller in one of those categories competed against a softer big-ticket market for the shopper's attention, and many of them won that attention in the last two weeks.

The Season Started Slow and Ended Strong

This was not a straight-line season. Datum's early read in October found marketplace GMV down 7 to 10 percent in the first four days, which is why the mid-season coverage sounded gloomy. By the close, the fourth week and the final four days were up 71 percent over the corresponding period last year.

Part of that is calendar. Diwali fell on November 8 this year against October 20 in 2025, so the window opened later and stretched longer, pushing spending into a different pay cycle. The report's advice to planners is direct: "Plans built on the opening day and big tickets will under-deliver; the money is in smaller towns and in the weeks before Diwali."

What Small Sellers Should Do Differently

• Treat your own website as a channel, not a brochure. Brand sites grew orders at nearly four times the marketplace rate. Make sure the site loads fast on a mid-range phone, accepts UPI, states delivery timelines and can run a festive offer without a developer.
• Build a quick commerce plan if your product is consumable. Start with one city and a short list of fast-moving packs. Small packs and top-up sizes suit a shopper buying in ten minutes, and they protect margin better than discounting a large pack.
• Design for repeat orders. Bundles, refill packs, WhatsApp reorder reminders and a simple loyalty offer do more for revenue when the average basket is shrinking than another flat discount.
• Hold budget for the last two weeks. The final week and four days delivered 71 percent growth. A plan that spends the whole festive budget on opening day misses where the money actually landed.
• Reset your order-value assumptions. Recalculate free-shipping thresholds, packaging costs, ad targets and return provisioning on a smaller average basket, not on last year's.
• Do not bet the season on one big-ticket category. Phone sales fell in volume even as prices rose. A seller with a spread of everyday products had a better season than one waiting for a single high-value SKU to carry the month.

What to Watch Next

The wedding season and Republic Day sales follow, and quick commerce platforms are still expanding their non-grocery assortment, which will pull more everyday categories onto those shelves. Discovery is moving too. In Datum's shopper survey, 51 percent of online shoppers said they had used an AI chatbot to research a purchase in the past three months, ahead of comparison websites at 37 percent, voice assistants at 35 percent, price trackers at 33 percent and forums at 27 percent.

For a small brand, that means the product description, the review count, the price and the delivery promise now have to be legible to a machine that summarises them for a shopper. Being found is no longer only about ranking in a marketplace search box. It is also about being described accurately when a shopper asks an assistant which brand to buy.

The 17 percent growth figure will be quoted all week. For a small seller, the more useful numbers are 75, 30 and 8: quick commerce orders, brand website orders and marketplace orders. Those three numbers describe where next festive season's budget should go.

Sources

• ET Retail (IANS) - India's online festive sales grow 17 pc to Rs 1.41 lakh crore: Report
• Business Standard - India's festive online sales rise 17%, but shoppers spend less per order
• The Statesman - Online festive sales in India grow 17% to Rs 1.41 lakh crore
• Datum Intelligence - 2026 Festive Outlook and Festive Barometer
• Business Today - Festive sale slowdown: Ecommerce sales fall nearly 10% as smartphone prices rise