Paytm Steps into E-Commerce Market with the Launch of New Seller App
Indian mobile payment start-up Paytm is forcing itself to the rapidly growing e-commerce market in India. Lately, the online payment platform announced itself as a new-fangled e-commerce company and said it would work with emerging businesses. The start-up firm, aiming to become India’s Taobao, came up with two big announcements -One is the wallet app, and the other is a platform for sellers that allows both individuals and businesses to sell their products.
The Founder and Chief Executive of Paytm owner One97 Communications, Vijay Shekhar Sharma said in a statement –
Everyone is moving to mobile now, but that is what we started with. We see opportunity in enabling payments in everyday use cases.
The mobile payment service has updated its website to tie-up with more sellers. At the top left of the Paytm homepage, users will now see a ‘Become a Seller’ button (a seller app), clicking which small and medium-sized firms can exhibit their products on a widely recognised platform. The emerging businesses can display their catalogue, manage their inventory and orders on Paytm. The listing would be absolutely free, and connecting merchants don’t have to pay any fee for enrolling themselves on Paytm. This will help flourish start-ups as other websites charge 10%-15% commission.
It also launched Paytm Wallet app that allows users to transfer money within the wallets. The app offers users to transfer money to a bank account from the wallet so that they can cash out the required amount. Sharma added to his comments, “We have about 66 million wallets, which we want to take to 100 million by the year end. We’re doing 1 million money transfers a day on the beta version of the wallet app.” Paytm Wallet accounts are RBI approved. A user can make a monthly transaction of maximum Rs. 1 lakh.
Paytm getting financial support by Alibaba’s finance arm Ant Financial presently holds a 25% stake. Eric Jing, Ant Financial’s chief operating officer, stated that it is sharing its learnings from China’s Taobao with the Indian mobile service provider. The company expects to earn over $4 billion (Rs 25,360 crore) by the year end and take onboard 1,00,000 sellers, which is 33,000 as of now. Paytm is spending more than Rs 500 crore on marketing this year.
Paytm kicked off as an online recharge website, and monitoring the recent business trend of operating from mobile, the company planned to turn into an e-commerce company. The increased usage of smartphones and internet availability has paved way for websites to become a mobile-only business. The new investors will strengthen Paytm’s position in India and help gain a stronghold in the country where already established players like Amazon, Flipkart, and Snapdeal enjoy a majority.
