With festive season sale around the corner, e-commerce startups in India are gearing up with offers and discounts to get the bigger pie. In line with this, Paytm Mall — the e-commerce entity of Paytm, is preparing a war chest to expand its network of sellers.
As per the reports, Paytm Mall is planning to invest around Rs 32 crore to get more than 50,000 sellers on its platform. With this campaign, the company is hoping to enable its offline retailer partners to set up stores online.
With the ‘Retailer Inclusion Programme’, Paytm Mall will be setting up a team of 500 personnel who will address the needs of offline retailers and help them in their transition online. This team acts as a direct link between the company and its partner-retailers. The team members meet sellers on regular basis to receive their feedback, understand their challenges and offer necessary support for their growth.
Amit Sinha, COO of Paytm Mall, said,
We aim to bring on-board around 50,000 shopkeepers in the first year of the programme, educate them on technology and provide various kinds of awareness programmes and learning facilities which will help them in their business.
He further adds that the company will help shopkeepers with providing access to working capital, which has been a tough task for the small retailers to get access to. He also claims that the support they provide will be beyond technology and capital.
The company will be equipping shopkeepers with technology by digitizing product catalogues, opening their stores on the platform and by enabling QR code transactions.
Reports suggest that Paytm Mall will partner with external financial organisations to enable working capital loans ranging from Rs 10,000 to Rs 25 lakh for these retailers. Paytm Mall will also undertake GST training for offline retailers under this programme, along with extending logistics support.
Last month, Paytm transferred over 800 employees from its parent company, One97 Communications Ltd, to Paytm Mall. The company had earlier said that it has plans to hire another 2,000 employees, including a team of technical experts, to scale up its operations.