Paytm Mall To Onboard Small Merchants After Culling Fake Sellers

Logo of Paytm.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter/@Paytm)

Online retailer Paytm Mall is pushing to expand its merchant network after it delisted nearly two-thirds of its sellers suspected of selling fakes.

The China’s Alibaba Group-backed e-tailer, run by Paytm E-commerce Pvt. Ltd., will spend $5 million to expand its offline merchant network as it gears up to take on entrenched rivals Amazon.com Inc. and Flipkart Online Services Pvt.

Paytm Mall has 30,000 sellers on the platform after it de-listed 85,000 merchants last month. The firm has set up a team of 500 personnel as part of its retailer inclusion platform to address the needs of sellers and to bring them onboard, the company said in a statement.

“India does not need one large e-retailer, it needs millions of e-retailers,” said Amit Sinha, the newly appointed chief operating officer of the Indian company, which recently raised $200 million in a funding round led by Alibaba.

The firm will continue to engage with partnered retailers to build inclusion programme and enhance their businesses, he said. “This will create new jobs and further support our nation.”

All the new sellers will be equipped with technology by digitising their catalogues, the company said. The firm will also help sellers open their store on its mall and will make their shops QR Code-enabled. It has also extended logistics support and Goods and Services Tax training and would also facilitate access to working capital loans to make it seamless to do business.

Amazon has more than 200,000 sellers on its platform and Flipkart has about half of that. Paytm E-commerce was spun out of One97 Communications, the operator of the Paytm digital payments service, in which Alibaba and its Ant Financial affiliate own a substantial stake.

(This article was originally published in BloombergQuint, and has been republished with permission.)