Festive shopping.
The festive shopping season does not begin when the sale banners go up. It begins now, in the quiet weeks before, when prices are still ordinary and nobody is in a hurry.
That distinction matters more than most shoppers realise. India's online retail market reached $65-66 billion in gross merchandise value in 2025, having more than doubled in five years, with the number of shoppers rising to roughly 290-300 million. A disproportionate share of that spending is compressed into a few weeks. Daily volumes during peak festive events run at close to three times normal traffic, and off-season daily sales can fall more than 70 per cent below festive highs. With Diwali falling in November this year, the heaviest 30 to 35 day window is still ahead.
What follows is not a list of deals. It is a method for judging them.
Every sale price is presented against a reference: the crossed-out figure, the "was" price, the percentage badge. That reference is set by the seller, and it is frequently the maximum retail price rather than the price the product has actually been selling at.
The result is a discount that is technically accurate and practically meaningless. A product listed at â¹4,999 against an MRP of â¹8,999 looks like a 44 per cent saving. If it traded at â¹4,799 through most of June, it is not a saving at all.
The fix is to establish your own baseline before the sale starts. Note the current price of anything you intend to buy, then check it again when the sale opens. Price-tracking services do this automatically - platforms such as Squeal My Deal and Mine My Deal log listing prices over time, so you can see where an item has genuinely traded rather than relying on the figure the page shows you.
"People used to wait for the festive sale. Now they watch a product for three weeks before they buy it," says Bhavin Swadas, who tracks discount trends across Indian e-commerce. "Once you have seen what something actually sold for in June, a September discount stops looking like much of a discount. That is the real shift - shoppers stopped trusting the crossed-out number."
Not all categories behave the same way during festive events.
Mobiles and large electronics are where genuine reductions concentrate. These are the volume drivers, brands fund the discounting directly, and competition between platforms is sharpest. Older-generation flagship phones and last year's television models are usually the best value in the entire calendar.
Fashion and accessories are the opposite. Margins are wide enough that high headline percentages are easy to offer without much real movement in price, and much festive fashion inventory is produced specifically for the sale. A 70 per cent discount on an item that has never sold at full price is a pricing decision, not a bargain.
Home appliances and furniture fall in between. Discounts are moderate but exchange offers and installation bundles can add meaningful value - provided you would have bought the item anyway.
Groceries and daily essentials rarely discount deeply. Quick commerce has expanded enormously - the segment has scaled to $10-11 billion in GMV and has roughly doubled annually over the past two years - but speed is the product being sold, not price. Ten-minute delivery carries a convenience premium that is easy to stop noticing.
Health and personal care is the section where festive discounting deserves the most caution, and for reasons that have nothing to do with the discount.
Supplements, protein powders, skincare actives and similar products are sold on claims most buyers cannot evaluate. A 40 per cent reduction on something that was never going to work is not a saving. Three specific habits help here.
First, check the quantity and concentration, not just the price. Bulk festive packs often work out costlier per gram than the standard size once you account for what you will realistically finish before expiry.
Second, watch the default. Auto-refill and "subscribe and save" options are frequently pre-selected in this category, and the recurring price after the first discounted delivery is rarely the price you signed up for.
Third, do not stockpile anything with a shelf life. A year's supply bought at a discount and discarded at month eight is a loss, not a bargain.
"The design problem and the information problem compound each other," says Saula Lasaganibau, who writes on consumer education in the supplements sector. "You get a buyer who cannot fully evaluate the product claim, on a checkout flow engineered to make the recurring option the default. Whichever one you fix, the other still costs them money."
Anything ingestible or prescription-adjacent should be treated as a medical decision first and a shopping decision second, regardless of what the sale price is.
Financing is now central to festive commerce. In recent festive events, a substantial share of purchases have been made on EMI, and the large majority of those on no-cost schemes.
No-cost EMI is not free credit. The interest is typically absorbed into the product price or offset by a discount you would otherwise have received in cash. If a card offer gives you a straight reduction and the no-cost EMI option does not, compare the two totals rather than assuming the instalment plan is the better deal. And the obligation persists whether or not you still want the item in month five.
The shoppers who save the most during festive season are rarely the ones who shop the hardest. They are the ones who did their thinking in August.
