Paytm Mall eyes $9 bn in GMV by 2018-end after $29 bn capital infusion

Taking its expansion plan in the fast lane after infusion of Rs 29 billion from SoftBank, Paytm Mall, the e-commerce company of Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led One97 Communications, is eyeing $9 billion in gross merchandise value (GMV) by the end of this year.

The company plans to double the number of products on the platform and increase the number of sellers. “The idea is to double down on the plan that we had in terms of the online to offline strategy. We have an aggressive expansion plan for this year. As far as the seller base is concerned, we plan to increase it from 75,000 to 300,000 by the end of this year. We will cover the whole spectrum of sellers from fashion, appliances, electronics and mobile phones as well as fast-moving consumer goods,” Paytm Mall Chief Operating Officer Amit Sinha said.

Paytm Mall recently raised about Rs 29 billion from SoftBank Investment Holdings and Alibaba.com Singapore E-commerce, in a deal that valued the online shopping venture of Paytm at $2 billion.

The company, which did $3 billion in GMV last year, plans to triple it by the end of this year.

“Last year, we hit a peak of $3 billion. This time, we want to hit three times of that, around $9 billion,” Sinha added.

This year around, the company would bring in more offline sellers and shopkeepers on the platform, and bolster its backend logistics. It hopes these measures would help increase the number of repeat customers coming to Paytm Mall.

“Deeper shopkeeper and seller penetration in all pin-codes, return customers, stronger logistics network are a few of the things we are working on,” he said.

The company also plans to increase the same day and next day coverage from 6 per cent of the country to almost 30 percent of the pincodes.

While at present Paytm Mall is present in around 20,000 pin-codes, it has been actively working on increasing that.

Also while it is not looking actively looking at any merger or acquisition but if it find a technology firm that might help in improving logistics it might look at acquiring such a firm.

Realising groceries could be the key to get repeat customers on its e-commerce platform, Paytm Mall is planning major expansion of the segment. The latest entrant in the e-commerce race, Paytm Mall hopes to earn a gross merchandise value (GMV) of more than $3 billion from just the online grocery segment.

The company hopes to take on Amazon India, which gets more than 50 percent of its daily grocery orders and is running a number of programmes, including Amazon Pantry and Amazon Now, its two-hour grocery delivery service.

“The biggest learning that I have got is that grocery is the fastest growing category in e-commerce. The consumers come back again. We have a daily needs section in Paytm Mall for that reason. At present level, around 25 per cent of the GMV at Paytm Mall comes from grocery; it will go up to 40 per cent. I think groceries would contribute around $3-billion GMV by end of the year,” Vijay Shekhar Sharma had earlier said.