Paytm Mall Adds New services to Online offerings Amid Growing Competition
Paytm Mall Adds New services to Online offerings Amid Growing Competition

Online payment platform, Paytm Mall has come up with a new range of services, including no-cost every month installments, extended warranty, device insurance and easy exchanges, for white goods and mobile phones. This is in line with e-commerce operator’s strategy to complement its offline-to-online (O2O) platform.

The SoftBank Group and Alibaba Group-backed e-commerce company, which was valued at $1.9 billion after its last funding round in April, has targeted 25% growth in gross revenue for its partner retail stores, and gaining a dominant share in the smartphones, appliances and consumer electronics categories by the end of fiscal 2019, the company said in a statement.

Amit Sinha, chief operating officer at Paytm Mall said, “The difference between us and the others is that we have a strong wide array of products, for which we are known for. Secondly, till now, none of these services were available in the offline sector… It is a huge challenge, and one that we are looking to solve for them.”

Paytm Mall, which is owned by Paytm E-Commerce, has brought in some financial partners, like ICICI Bank and Bajaj FinServe, into the fold along with largest white goods manufacturers, such as Samsung, LG, Panasonic, and Symphony.

The company will offer EMIs of Rs 1,000 crore across two million products from 60 brands. It will also offer easy exchange across 7,000 pin codes and affordable device insurance, extended warranty services across 75,000-plus partner retail stores.

“We expect to reach all 7,000 pin codes over the next three months. EMI and warranty services, being primarily tech-enabled services, are already operational on our platform. This is a perfect example of how the O2O strategy should work,” Sinha said further.

Paytm has made the announcement at a time of immense competition with the other e-commerce players who have already built a strong customer base like Flipkart and Amazon. The latter two companies already offer the services on their respective platforms, however, according to Sinha, it is a -question of scale. “It took a bit of time for us to implement the nuts and bolts of the O2O model... It took us some time to evolve to a level where we could convince everybody that this was a great opportunity for everybody in the ecosystem,” Sinha said.

 
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