The best time to buy most things online is during a handful of predictable sale windows, not whenever a banner says "limited time". In India that means the festive sales in September and October for phones, TVs and laptops, end-of-season fashion sales in June to July and December, and the weeks before summer for air conditioners and coolers.
Retailers run these events on roughly the same calendar every year, so a wishlist and a little patience do more than any coupon hunt. The one habit that matters is noting a product's normal price before the sale starts, so you can tell a real discount from a relabelled one.
Use the month-by-month guide below to plan purchases, then check the category cheat sheet before you buy. Planning around the calendar is the cheapest way to hit the best time to buy anything.
The big sale seasons, month by month
Big deals cluster into a few tentpole events rather than spreading evenly across the year, a pattern that also shows up clearly in our Black Friday statistics and the wider US e-commerce statistics.
