Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) 2013 – A Google Initiative

This post is written by Shiv Kukreja, who is a Certified Financial Planner and runs a financial planning firm, Ojas Capital in Delhi/NCR. He can be reached at [email protected]

I was in South Extension market of South Delhi this weekend and as the winter season has started gathering pace here in North India, I was looking forward to shop for some winter clothing, like a couple of sweatshirts and a jacket or a sweater.

I went to various stores to explore options like Nike, Adidas, Puma, UCB, Pantaloons, Levi’s etc., but, either I did not find the kind of boring/dull clothes I wear or I found them quite costly i.e. beyond my spending budget.

Though I liked a couple of sweatshirts, one from Nike costing Rs. 1,795 and one from Puma costing Rs. 1,599, but then I gave it a thought to try for some online offers from Flipkart or Myntra or any other online store.

I came back home, searched them on internet and to my disappointment, I did not find any good deal. After wasting 15-20 minutes here and there, I came back to my regular Q&A session here on OneMint.

After answering a few queries here, my attention went to an ad on this website itself, which claimed to carry the details of India’s biggest online discount shopping of 2013. It has been named Great Online Shopping Festival (GOSF) 2013 and launched by Google.

I clicked on the ad and found certain details about it. I got to know that the initiative will remain ‘ON’ for a three days period starting today, December 11th and will end on December 13th and most of the leading online brands are going to participate in the shopping festival. I somehow convinced myself to wait for 2-3 days time and try my luck to get one or two good deals in the shopping festival.

As I was working till late night yesterday or early morning today, once again my attention went to a Flipkart ad on this website, which has decided to participate in GOSF this year. As it was already December 11, I went to visit Flipkart again to check if there is any offer which I can avail of.

Initially, I was positively surprised to see Flat 30% on Men’s Clothing, but then I found it is not there on Nike sweatshirt which I liked in the South Ex Part II market. I again felt cheated and disappointed. Then I tried my luck with some other companies or some other products like sweatshirts/sweaters from Puma or Adidas.

While doing that, I got to know that if I order 3 products or more, I’ll be eligible for a flat 30% discount. I selected 2 sweatshirts, one from Nike, one from Puma, and a Puma sweater and proceeded to checkout. This time I was happy to get a flat 30% discount on my shopping cart i.e. Rs. 1,380 discount on my shopping worth Rs. 4,597.

As a human nature, I got greedy and asked myself to check other online stores also, like Myntra and Jabong. I went to Myntra and got offered a discount of flat 35% without any minimum order requirement and Jabong had it as flat 40% with minimum order of Rs. 2,499 or flat 36% with shopping of any amount. While Myntra wanted me to pay VAT extra on the discounted amount, Jabong went one step ahead to bear VAT itself.

To cut the long story short, I finally ordered 3 sweatshirts from Myntra – one for myself, one for my brother and one for my friend. My total bill value came out to be Rs. 3,274, including VAT of Rs. 155.90 and after a discount of Rs. 1,678.95 on the before discount value of Rs. 4,797. What’s more, I got a “Puma Unisex Black & Grey Fundamentals Sports Duffle Bag” absolutely free as my before discount bill crossed Rs. 3,999 mark.

Now, I am also considering a couple of Nike sweatshirts worth Rs. 1,795 each from Jabong, which is going to entitle me a flat 40% discount to make it cost Rs. 1,077 each after discount. I’ll take the final decision after I finish writing this post.

This was my story about GOSF and my experience with the discounts on offer was extremely satisfactory. As every rupee saved is equal to every rupee earned, my idea with this post was to highlight some of the offers you can avail of in this shopping festival. So, here are some of them which I could notice to be worth considering:

Flipkart Offers in GOSF

* Flat 30% off on Men’s & Women’s clothing on purchase of 3 products or more. There are certain items which carry flat 30% off and don’t require you to do shopping of minimum 3 products.

* Flat 30% + Extra 30% off on Men’s Footwear on a purchase worth Rs. 2,999 or more OR Flat 30% + Extra 25% off on Men’s Footwear on a purchase worth Rs. 1,999 or more.

* Amex Cards Offer – Extra 10% off (up to Rs. 3,000) on purchases of Rs. 5,000 or more. This 10% is over & above your normal discount.

Myntra Offers in GOSF

* Flat 35% off on everything bought online with Coupon Code GOSF35. No minimum purchase required. Flat 40% off on selected brands.

* Holiday voucher worth Rs. 5,999 free with shopping worth Rs. 4,999 or more.

* VAT is charged extra after discount.

Jabong Offers in GOSF

* Flat 40% off on minimum purchase worth Rs. 2,499 with Coupon Code GOSF40

* Flat 36% off without any minimum purchase with Coupon Code GOSF36

* Flat 40% off + Extra 40% off on certain items

Yebhi Offers in GOSF

* Flat 33.33% off on minimum purchase of Rs. 1,499 with Coupon Code GOSF33

Airtel Offers in GOSF

* Get a Wi-Fi modem free on purchase of a broadband plan of 4 Mbps or more

* Get a 4G dongle free with Rs. 2,999 or 3,999 advance rental plans

* Get 25% extra data on 3G and 2G data packs

Croma Retail Offers in GOSF

* Additional 10% discount up to Rs. 2,500 on every purchase with Coupon Code GOSF2013

eBay India Offers in GOSF

* Apple iPhone 5C for Rs. 37,990

* HDFC Credit Cards Offer – Extra 15% off (up to Rs. 1,500) with Coupon Code 15HDFCEBAY

GOSF is an initiative by Google and there are many online participants across different sectors taking part in this online mega festival, like Snapdeal, yatra.com, goibibo, tradus.com, Amazon India etc. As it is a marketing initiative, some people are positioning it to be India’s answer to Cyber Monday in the United States.

As I am writing for this post, the official website for GOSF has been down. I don’t know if that is due to some technical reasons or if the euphoria is so great for a Google site to handle such traffic.

I found this initiative to be quite interesting as the kind of discounts/offers it is currently offering, before the peak winter season, normally start pouring in from the second half of January here in North India when the season is about to end. I could avail one of these offers to the best of my expectations. Would you like to go for any? Check out and share your experiences.