The Noida-based mobile commerce platform, Paytm, which currently has 600 partners listed on the site, plans to invest Rs 640 crore to help medium and small merchants to sell online on its platform, gobig.paytm.com.
Believing in liberal trade and free-will, the company won’t seek exclusivity from the sellers in this regard. Renu Satti, Vice President-SME business and operations at Paytm was reportedly quoted as saying, “We are creating the whole ecosystem for merchants on our Gobig merchant platform, gobig.paytm.com. Merchants can avail services including content writing, cataloguing, online marketing and imaging. Paytm wants to get nearly 10,000 service providers on board by the end of the year.”
E-commerce majors Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon have also been looking to expand their marketplaces with the addition of SMEs. Flipkart is expecting to invite one lakh sellers by year end, whereas Snapdeal with current standing of 1.5 lakh sellers on its platform, plans to add around 10 lakh merchants in coming three years. On the other hand, Shopclues too wants to increase its merchant base from 1.25 lakh to five lakh by the end of 2015.
Valued at $11 billion, or about Rs 70,000 crore, in 2013, India’s internet market has been predicted to rise upto $137 billion — Rs 8.77 lakh crore — by 2020, according a Morgan Stanley Research report.
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