Cities such as Patna, Nagpur and Kanpur witness increased demand for affordable laptops; constitute 50% of the demand
As the academic year has begun, students are adopting a judicious mix of classroom and online tutoring. This has led to a greater emphasis among students on investing in devices that help boost productivity and as a result, there has been a significant growth in the demand for affordable laptops.
Flipkart, India’s homegrown e-commerce marketplace, which is celebrating its “Back to College” campaign is making available a wide selection of computing products to help meet the evolving requirements of the customers across 100% of the serviceable pincodes.
Flipkart: Students from tier 3 cities lead demand for affordable laptops in the last 6 months
According to insights by Flipkart, the demand for laptops under INR 40,000, typically considered the affordable segment, constituted over 50% of the demand indicating the growing need for affordable laptops. Chromebooks, which have emerged as one of the most attractive propositions for customers, witnessed 7x more searches from December 2021 to May 2022 and remain popular in this category. While metro and tier 1 cities constitute over one-third of the demand, it’s the tier-3 and beyond cities which garner 50% of the demand in the first quarter of this year as compared to the 46% demand witnessed over the same period last year. Cities such as Patna, Nagpur and Kanpur have witness increased demand in this period.
With brands featuring newer specifications to their devices such as faster processors, fast charging, gaming features and OLED screens, the average selling price of laptops have increased by about 10% and are preferred by students for an elevated performance. This has also led the brands to come up with innovative product solutions with propositions such as “lighter than air” laptops which is gradually gaining popularity with increased usage of computing devices.
Flipkart has also launched a new virtual storefront on the app called “Students Club” that will offer verified students in the age group of 13-25 years, access to a curation of products, brand memberships and affordability constructs.
According to Rakesh Krishnan, Senior Director, Electronics at Flipkart, “As India’s preferred destination for electronic requirements, Flipkart has been at the forefront of meeting customers’ evolving needs as electronics become an essential part of our lives. In this journey, we have expanded our product portfolio in collaboration with our brand partners to offer the widest selection of laptops and our endeavour is to provide best-in-class technological solutions to the customers and ensure a seamless shopping experience.
The student cohort has been one of the fastest growing segments and we have initiated programs such as Student Club to offer a curated section of laptops to cater to students’ diverse interests. We will continue to map these evolving preferences to expand our selection, offer greater selection, affordability and seamless delivery to our customers.”
Apart from making the widest selection available to millions of our customers, Flipkart is also hand holding users in finding the right product fit with curated sections for pricing, processing power etc., in order to help customers make an informed choice. This coupled with various value added benefits such as online learning material available on Flipkart will help address the educational needs of the students.
