E-commerce giant Amazon has postponed its flagship Prime Day sale event in India due to a surge in Covid-19 cases across the country. Amazon’s Prime Day sale is scheduled to take place globally in June. 

According to a report in economictimes.com, the Prime Day sale will not be conducted in India and Canada in June, even as Amazon goes ahead with plans to host the flagship event in countries including the United States, UK, Germany, France and Spain.

An Amazon India spokesperson told the publication that the company had decided to pause its Prime Day event in India owing to the current Covid-19 situation and said it was working on figuring out when the event can be held.

No new date for the sale has been announced for India or Canada, yet.

Worth mentioning here is that last year, Amazon had pushed its Prime Day sale from July to October for most global markets due to the pandemic.

This year, the company has to conduct the sale in June, saying it would be better for customers, sellers and vendors.

“There are a number of factors,” chief financial officer Brian Olsavsky had said during the company’s first quarter earnings call, explaining the rationale behind hosting the sale in June this year. “It might be better — for customers, sellers and vendors to experiment with a different time period.”

In India, which saw relatively fewer infections and deaths last year, Amazon had held its Prime Day sale in August.

Worth mentioning here is that Amazon’s Prime Day sale was the first big online sale event conducted in the country last year after the nationwide lockdowns were lifted in phases. According to Forrester Research, Amazon saw sales of as much as $500 million (about Rs 3,700 crore) during the two-day event.