E-commerce Giants Bet Big on Offline Carnival Experiences
Major e-commerce players like Myntra, Nykaa, and Amazon are investing heavily in large-scale offline festivals, with events costing upwards of ₹50 crore, to build brand communities and drive significant revenue.
Key Takeaways
- Myntra’s Glamstream Fest attracted over 10,000 attendees, with creators directly generating 10% of its revenue.
- Nykaaland’s attendance doubled to 30,000 this year, while Amazon’s Beautyverse gathered 1,400+ Prime members and influencers.
- These events create cultural legitimacy, drive brand discovery, and generate massive organic content.
The Festival Phenomenon in Numbers
Myntra transformed Mumbai’s MMRDA Grounds into a giant carnival, drawing 10,000 people, including 3,000 creators and 30+ brands. Nykaa expanded its Nykaaland festival to Delhi, featuring 60 brands and 30,000 participants. Amazon held its exclusive Beautyverse event for 1,400 attendees with 30+ brands and 200 creators.
Sunder Balasubramanian, Myntra’s CMO, confirms this is a core business strategy: “Creators today generate 10% of our revenue, so this is clearly an ROI-based output programme. We now work with over 3,50,000 creators every month.”
Beyond Ticket Sales: The Real Value
Despite massive investments, these events aren’t yet major revenue streams. Manish Solanki of TheSmallBigIdea notes: “Ticket sales barely cover operational costs. The real monetisation happens through indirect revenue.” However, they build brand recall and emotional connections that cannot replicate.
Why Consumers Crave These Experiences
Siddharth Bhagat, Director at Amazon Fashion and Beauty, explains the shift: “This is driven by Gen Z and millennial consumers, rising demand from tier-II and III cities, and growing appetite for trend-led, tech-enabled discovery.” Beautyverse, hosted before Prime Day, creates a “high-energy discovery ecosystem” that builds trust and inspiration-led commerce.
The Threefold Benefits for Brands
According to Rutu Mody Kamdar of Jigsaw Brand Consultants, these events solve three critical needs: creating cultural legitimacy, driving brand discovery, and serving as a powerful content engine. “One day of an on-ground event equals weeks of organic content that money can’t usually buy,” she observes.
The results speak for themselves – Myntra’s previous event generated over 3 billion social media impressions, prompting plans to double creator marketing investments in the next 18-24 months.
