Amazon Prime Day breaks records with 18,000 orders per minute in India
'Prime members purchased more items than any previous Prime Day shopping event, while we created new records on speed with the highest number of same-day deliveries,' said Akshay Sahi, Head of Amazon Prime, Delivery, and Returns Experiences, India and Emerging Markets. 'Thanks to our recent investment of ₹2,000 crore in the well-being of our associates and the scaling up of our operations, we were able to deliver even faster and safer this year.'
Prime members shopped from thousands of new products launched by over 400 Indian and global brands, including Intel, Samsung, OnePlus, Bajaj, HP, BoAt, Puma, and Adidas. Purchases spanned smartphones, TVs, appliances, fashion, groceries, and home essentials.
Compared to last year's Prime Day, smartphones saw high double-digit growth as Indians upgraded to flagship devices, driving up average selling prices across all city tiers. AI-enabled laptops, premium tablets, and health-focused wearables emerged as customer favourites, while premium audio segments achieved strong double-digit growth in Tier 2 cities.
The home, kitchen, and outdoor category delivered its biggest Prime Day ever with 1.2X growth, supported by over 80 marquee brand launches. Fitness equipment sales surged 1.5X, with treadmill sales doubling, while furniture saw explosive growth with chairs and recliners achieving 10X increases.
'We also had a blockbuster Prime Day launch with our water purifiers, and it was a massive success,' said Arindam Paul, Founding Member and Chief Business Officer at Atomberg.
Two-wheeler sales grew 1.9X across more than 500 cities, highlighting the expanding reach of online vehicle purchases beyond major metros.
Eric Vas, President (Urbanite Business) at Bajaj Auto Ltd, said the company's latest offering, Chetak 3001, received an overwhelming response, becoming the No.1 best-selling electric scooter during Prime Day 2025.
Beauty categories experienced exceptional growth, with skincare and colour cosmetics seeing 2X increases. Professional beauty services witnessed up to 3X growth, while Korean beauty brands saw up to 7X growth.
Health-focused products gained momentum with whey protein sales increasing by over 80 per cent and coffee consumption growing 1.3X nationally, outpacing tea and growing 2X in Tier 2 cities.
Shashi Kumar, the Chief Executive of Akshayakalpa Organic, reported significant gains, noting the company saw a remarkable 50 per cent growth in sales during Prime Day.
Financing Fuels Premium Shift
This surge reflects a broader trend where Amazon's financing options and exclusive content are enabling smaller Indian cities to drive premium consumption. For instance, 1 out of 4 spends this Prime Day were on EMI (equated monthly instalment), and 9 out of 10 EMI purchases were driven by No Cost EMI.
The Premium Smartphone segment (priced higher than ₹30,000) witnessed over 60 per cent growth in value. Nearly 70 per cent of this growth came from Tier 2 and beyond cities.
Amazon Fresh recorded its highest order volumes, with Tier 2+ cities leading 90 per cent growth, while daily essentials saw over 70 per cent of new customers coming from Tier 2 and 3 cities. This demonstrates Prime Day's expanding geographic reach.
The Tier-2/3 city boom extended beyond consumers to sellers, with small and medium businesses seeing record participation. Notably, 68 per cent of these sellers were based in Tier 2 and 3 cities and beyond, while Amazon Business witnessed a 3X spike in new customer registrations during Prime Day, with 7X growth in Prime sign-ups.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Mint
27 minutes ago
- Mint
The AI boom's hidden risk to the economy
In the past two weeks one big tech company after another reported blowout earnings amid a wholesale embrace of artificial intelligence. Look a little closer, and a more unsettling side to the AI boom emerges. All the spending on chips, data centers and other AI infrastructure is draining American corporations of cash. This underscores the hidden risks from the AI boom. No one doubts its potential to raise growth and productivity in the long run. But financing that boom is straining the companies and capital markets. Since the first quarter of 2023, investment in information processing equipment has expanded 23%, after inflation, while total gross domestic product has expanded just 6%. In the first half of the year, information processing investment contributed more than half the sluggish 1.2% overall growth rate. In effect, AI spending propped up the economy while consumer spending stagnated. Much of that investment consists of the graphics-processing units, memory chips, servers, and networking gear to train and run the large language models at the heart of the boom. And all that computing power needs buildings, land and power generation. This is transforming big tech's business models. For years, investors loved those models because they were 'asset-light." They earned their profits on intangible assets such as intellectual property, software, and digital platforms with 'network effects." Users flocked to Facebook, Google, the iPhone, and Windows because other users did. Adding revenue required little in the way of more buildings and equipment, making them cash-generating machines. This can be seen in a metric called free cash flow, roughly defined as cash flow from operations minus capital expenditures. It excludes things such as noncash impairment charges that can distort net income. This is arguably the purest measure of a business's underlying cash-generating potential. Amazon, for example, tells investors: 'Our financial focus is on long-term, sustainable growth in free cash flow." From 2016 through 2023, free cash flow and net earnings of Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft grew roughly in tandem. But since 2023, the two have diverged. The four companies' combined net income is up 73%, to $91 billion, in the second quarter from two years earlier, while free cash flow is down 30% to $40 billion, according to FactSet data. Apple, a relative piker on capital spending, has also seen free cash flow lag behind. For all of AI's obvious economic potential, the financial return remains a question mark. OpenAI and Anthropic, the two leading stand-alone developers of large language models, though growing fast, are losing money. Much of big tech companies' latest profits reflect their established franchises: ad spending for Meta and Alphabet, the iPhone for Apple. As to when their AI hardware will pay off, they counsel patience. Meta, parent of Facebook, reported a 36% rise in earnings for the second quarter, but a 22% drop in free cash flow. It said capital expenditure in 2025 would be roughly double last year's, with 'similarly significant" growth in 2026. Meta has said much of its AI-related capital spending supports core businesses, such as ads and content, and is already paying off. The balance goes toward generative AI such as its Llama model. 'We are early in the life cycle" of the latter investments, Chief Financial Officer Susan Li told analysts, and 'we don't expect that we are going to be realizing significant revenue from any of those things in the near term." Amazon began tapering its build-out of fulfillment centers in 2022, allowing free cash flow to turn positive. But in the last year, it has ramped up investment in Amazon Web Services, which hosts data and runs AI models for outside clients, and free cash flow is down by two-thirds from the previous year. Meta is among the major tech companies making big AI-related capital expenditures. For now, investors are pricing big tech as if their asset-heavy business will be as profitable as their asset-light models. So far, 'we don't have any evidence of that," said Jason Thomas, head of research at Carlyle Group. 'The variable people miss out on is the time horizon. All this capital spending may prove productive beyond their wildest dreams, but beyond the relevant time horizon for their shareholders," he added. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the nascent internet boom had investors throwing cash at startup web companies and broadband telecommunications carriers. They were right the internet would drive a productivity boom, but wrong about the financial payoff. Many of those companies couldn't earn enough to cover their expenses and went bust. In broadband, excess capacity caused pricing to plunge. The resulting slump in capital spending helped cause a mild recession in 2001. A dot-com-style bust looks far-fetched now. AI's big spenders are mature and profitable companies, and the demand for computing power exceeds the supply. But if their revenue and profit assumptions prove too optimistic, their current pace of capital spending will be hard to sustain. Amazon Web Services is spending $11 billion on a data center campus near South Bend, Ind. After the global financial crisis of 2007-09, big tech was both a beneficiary of low interest rates, and a cause. Between that crisis and Covid, these companies were generating five to eight times as much cash from operations as they invested, and that spare cash was recycled back into the financial system, Thomas, of Carlyle Group, estimates. It helped hold down long-term interest rates amid high federal deficits, as did inflation below the Federal Reserve's 2% target and the Fed buying bonds. Low interest rates, in turn, made investors value these companies' future profits even more highly. Today, government deficits are even larger, inflation is above 2% and the Fed has been shrinking its bondholdings. Meanwhile, corporations face steep investment needs to exploit AI and reshore production to avoid tariffs. Thomas estimates that since 2020, their cumulative free cash flow has been 78% lower, relative to GDP, than in the equivalent period following 2009. All this suggests that interest rates need to be substantially higher in the years ahead than in the years before the pandemic. That is another risk to the economy and these companies that investors may not fully appreciate. Write to Greg Ip at


Mint
27 minutes ago
- Mint
Trump Tariffs: Textile Ministry to meet top industry players next week, say sources
New Delhi, Union Textiles Minister Giriraj Singh will meet industry stakeholders next week to deliberate upon the potential impact of US President Donald Trump's announcement to impose a 25 per cent tariff on India and seek their views on the issue, according to sources. The US is India's largest market for textile and apparel exports, accounting for about 25 per cent of the country's total outbound shipment from the sector. Discussions in the meeting will also revolve around realising opportunities arising for India's textile sector from the UK-India FTA, which was signed last month, as the government and industry want to leave no stone unturned to achieve the textile export target of USD 100 billion by 2030, and mitigate the potential impact of the US tariff announcement, sources told PTI. While it would be "premature" to talk about any measures being considered to support domestic textile exporters in light of the US announcement, they said, the government wants to seek the industry's feedback at this juncture and discuss the challenges and opportunities in terms of the UK-India FTA and other markets with untapped potential. "We are continuously engaging with the industry. The minister has asked for a meeting. We will be talking to different players, the major garment export firms from India. Discussions will also revolve around realising opportunities arising for the textile sector from the UK-India FTA," according to sources. "The industry has set a target of USD 100 billion by 2030, which it is keen to achieve. So, they are looking at a variety of products and also at different markets. They are looking at strengthening and consolidating the existing markets. The government has also announced the Export Promotion Mission." The US on Friday slapped a 25 per cent tariff on India, potentially impacting about half of the USD 86 billion Indian exports to America, while the other half, including pharmaceuticals, electronics, and petroleum products, continued to be exempted from the levy. The sectors, which would bear the brunt of 25 per cent duty include textiles/ clothing , gems and jewellery , shrimp , leather and footwear , animal products , chemicals , and electrical and mechanical machinery . This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.


Time of India
27 minutes ago
- Time of India
Trump Tariffs: Textile Ministry to meet top industry players next week, say sources
Union Textiles Minister Giriraj Singh will convene with industry leaders next week to assess the potential consequences of the US's 25% tariff imposition on Indian goods. The meeting will explore strategies to mitigate the impact and capitalize on opportunities presented by the recently signed UK-India FTA. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads New Delhi: Union Textiles Minister Giriraj Singh will meet industry stakeholders next week to deliberate upon the potential impact of US President Donald Trump 's announcement to impose a 25 per cent tariff on India and seek their views on the issue, according to US is India's largest market for textile and apparel exports, accounting for about 25 per cent of the country's total outbound shipment from the in the meeting will also revolve around realising opportunities arising for India's textile sector from the UK-India FTA , which was signed last month, as the government and industry want to leave no stone unturned to achieve the textile export target of USD 100 billion by 2030, and mitigate the potential impact of the US tariff announcement, sources told it would be "premature" to talk about any measures being considered to support domestic textile exporters in light of the US announcement, they said, the government wants to seek the industry's feedback at this juncture and discuss the challenges and opportunities in terms of the UK-India FTA and other markets with untapped potential."We are continuously engaging with the industry. The minister has asked for a meeting. We will be talking to different players, the major garment export firms from India. Discussions will also revolve around realising opportunities arising for the textile sector from the UK-India FTA," according to sources."The industry has set a target of USD 100 billion by 2030, which it is keen to achieve. So, they are looking at a variety of products and also at different markets. They are looking at strengthening and consolidating the existing markets. The government has also announced the Export Promotion Mission."The US on Friday slapped a 25 per cent tariff on India, potentially impacting about half of the USD 86 billion Indian exports to America, while the other half, including pharmaceuticals, electronics, and petroleum products, continued to be exempted from the sectors, which would bear the brunt of 25 per cent duty include textiles/ clothing (10.3 billion), gems and jewellery (12 billion), shrimp (USD 2.24 billion), leather and footwear (USD 1.18 billion), animal products (USD 2 billion), chemicals (2.34 billion), and electrical and mechanical machinery (about USD 9 billion).