Paytm Mall aims to generate Rs 500 Cr worth business this festive season for traditional retailers

Indian ecommerce player, Paytm Mall on Tuesday said that it is targeting to generate over Rs 500 crore in actual sales and business this festive season. It launched its Maha Cashback Carnival on September 29, along with major ecommerce players Amazon and Flipkart, and will end on October 6. 

Paytm Mall has on-boarded over 30,000 new retailers ahead of the festive season. Under the partnership, these stores offer their catalog on Paytm Mall app, in-store pick-up, local deliveries, and exclusive brand vouchers.

The partnership also enables Paytm Mall to acquire new users, strengthen its assortment and expand its reach to the neighborhood brand outlets.

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Speaking on the same, Srinivas Mothey, Senior Vice President - Paytm Mall said,

"In preparation for the upcoming festive season, we are aggressively on-boarding retail stores and collaborating with new brands. We have also introduced exclusive brand vouchers as part of our ongoing engagement and aims to offer an incredible shopping experience. Our team is overwhelmed with customers' response to our on-going Maha Cashback Carnival. We have already witnessed 3x GMV within the first two days of this sale and are aiming for $300 million (Rs 2,100 crore) in GMV during the festive season."

The company also claims that it does not own and operate warehouses, rather it partners with the sellers and encourages them to use the local courier services for delivery, thereby bringing down the delivery time and costs. Through this approach, it is targeting to become EBITDA positive within two years.

Last week, Paytm Mall also bought eBay’s global inventory on its platform, ahead of the festive sales. The inventory includes over a million products in categories such as toys, collectibles, fashion, automobile accessories, gifts, and decor festive items.

“We are expanding the World Store which makes international brands available to Indian buyers on our platform. We aim to become the launch partner for international brands to cater to the Indian market.” Mothey added. 

For sometime, Paytm Mall has been claiming to concentrate on the market outside Tier 1 cities. While the ecommerce player agrees that metropolitans contribute to about 35 percent of its business; it says the rest is generated from small cities and towns.

During the festive sale in 2018, the ecommerce industry saw Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) jump 77 percent y-o-y, more than double the expected range of 35 percent of annual average sales growth for the etailing industry, data released by management consulting company, RedSeer said.

This year, RedSeer predicts the overall etailing industry is expected to do gross sales of $3.7 billion, or Rs 24,000 crore between September 29 and October 4, a y-o-y growth of 60-65 percent.

(Edited by Suman Singh)

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