Paytm Mall vows big push this festive season for traditional retailers

During the festive season itself, the company says it is aiming at $300 million (Rs 2,100 crore) in GMV.

Business Standard : Paytm Mall said it would generate at least Rs 500 crore in actual sales for its offline brick-and-mortar retailers this festive season. It says so at a time when trader bodies are at loggerheads with Amazon India and Flipkart over the massive discounts during such sale drives.

Paytm Mall is the online shopping platform created by Paytm, the e-commerce payment system and financial technology entity. We have, says the former, been working hard on our omni-channel model. This year, the company believes, most of the ‘leads’ it generates online would convert into sales offline.

Over the past six months, it has worked out massive discount and cashback schemes, with more than 100 brands and major offline retailers. Overall, Paytm Mall says, it is targeting not less than $2.1 billion (Rs 14,900 crore) in gross merchandise value (GMV) for the entire year.

As Amazon India has been doing, Paytm Mall has been concentrating a lot on the market outside the tier-I cities. While these metropolitan areas contribute 35 per cent of its business, the rest comes from elsewhere.

During the festive season itself, the company says it is aiming at $300 million (Rs 2,100 crore) in GMV. It has got on board over 30,000 new retailers and these stores will offer their catalogues on the Paytm Mall app, in-store pick-up, local deliveries and exclusive brand vouchers. The company has dedicated a team to address the needs of offline retailers and help their transition online.

The partnership will help it get new users, strengthen its assortment and expand its reach to the neighbourhood brand outlets. The firm does not own or operate warehouses; instead, it partners with sellers and encourages them to use local courier services for delivery. The target is to, within two years, show a positive figure on operating earnings, by addressing the issue of logistics cost.

“In preparation for the coming festive season, we are aggressively on-boarding retail stores and collaborating with new brands. We have also introduced exclusive brand vouchers...(and) are confident on achieving two-fold growth in our user base during this period,” said Srinivas Mothey, senior vice-president.

Paytm parent One 97 Communications' loss doubles to Rs 4,217 crore

One97 Communications banks on its services, other businesses to improve.

Paytm parent One 97 Communications’ consolidated loss more than doubled in the financial year ended March owing to capital expenditure on brand and business activity, but said it was going to focus more on its services and other businesses to improve turnover. Loss for 2018-19 (FY19) more than doubled to Rs 4,217.20 crore, compared with Rs 1,604.34 crore in the year-ago period.

One 97 in its annual report said its total revenue on a consolidated basis rose to Rs 3,579.67 crore in FY19 from Rs 3,309.61 crore a year ago.

“The company is focusing on strengthening its position in various business segments such as Payments Bank, insurance and insurance broking, travel ticketing, hotel, and mobile wallet services and that would result in better turnover in coming financial years,” Paytm's parent said.

The company has moved from being a mobile wallet business to becoming a one-stop shop for all kinds of bill payments, payment gateway aggregator services, ticket services, utility bills payments, and insurance and hotel booking services.

One 97 also has units of Subsidiary of One97 Communications Singapore in countries like Ivory Coast, South Africa, Nepal, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Rwanda, Uganda, Nigeria, and the US.

A Paytm spokesperson said, “For the last two years, we have been investing $1 billion each year to expand digital payments eco-system in our country. We will further invest about $3 billion in the next two years to scale the same. We believe India is at the inflection point of digital payments and Paytm’s sole focus is towards solving the merchant payments & offering them financial services. We will invest Rs 20,000 crore in the next two years towards achieving this.”

Business Standard has earlier reported that Paytm Mall is integrating its offline merchant base with international sellers on a single platform in a bid to take on competition.

During the year, founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s cumulative shareholding in the company remained at 15.73 per cent. Its largest investor continued to be Alipay Singapore E-Commerce, with 30.49 per cent cumulative shareholding, followed by SVF India Holding (Cayman) with about 19.69 per cent shares, SAIF III Mauritius Company (13.02 per cent), and Alibaba.com Singapore E-Commerce (7.70 per cent).

Business Standard