Leading ecommerce players in India and Google India have come together to bring the concept of Cyber Monday titled ‘Great Online Shopping Festival’ slated for December 12, 2012. This comes right after Citibank had announced its plans to launch a one-day online shopping sale in India on December 5, 2012 for its customers.

The festival will see participation from over 50 partners including leading e-commerce, local and classified, online travel sites and BFSI industry offering their best deals to customers all across India for 24 hours.

The initiative is aimed at encouraging shoppers to adopt online shopping with a focus to reach out to first time online buyers. The participating companies will also offer special deals for the first time buyers on their websites. The festival will offer them an opportunity to shop for jewelry, shoes, apparel, travel packages, books, kids wear, gadgets, watches, computer accessories, health and fitness equipment, home decor products, great deals on real estate, etc.

Rajan Anandan, Managing Director and VP – Sales and Operations, Google India said, “We’re very excited to partner with all the leading e-commerce players in the industry to bring the ‘Great online shopping festival’. The online shopping industry is estimated to be already over $1.5 billion and with this initiative we want to reach out and promote online shopping to the first time buyers. The industry has done a lot to promote e-commerce adoption in India and we’re partnering with them to provide users an easy access to all the deals. We look forward to great response from buyers all across India.”

Subhanker Sarker, COO, Indiatimes Shopping said, “This is a very exciting time for e-commerce players in India and this event highlights the potential of online commerce in our country. The shopping festival will be a gala event for shoppers and the first time buyers will have the opportunity to explore and gain from deals across a wide variety of products. We are sure that this event will be able to further popularise online shopping as a convenient, trustworthy and exciting experience, which is already making waves across the country.”

Mukesh Bansal, Co-Founder and CEO, Myntra said, “Online shopping in India is fast catching up to western markets and with initiatives such as the ‘Great online shopping festival’, first time shoppers will soon discover the benefits that e-commerce platforms have on offer. For this 24-hour sale, we have lined up some really exciting offers from our portfolio of 500 brands and we’re confident that shoppers will come back for more.”

Kunal Bahl, Co-Founder and CEO, Snapdeal said, “This is a great initiative which will bring together the industry and all leading players under one ‘roof’ and will further boost adoption of online shopping in India. It will expand our reach beyond the 18 million Snapdeal subscribers and will help us attract and reach more buyers.  As part of this initiative, we at Snapdeal have come up with some really exciting and exclusive offers for online shoppers across the country.”