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 Richa
Maheshwari, The Economic Times
Bengaluru,
11 February 2016
 Paytm
is tying up with mobile and large appliance retailers to list
their brick-and-mortar stores on its ecommerce platform as part
of its omni-channel strategy.
"We will help these retailers create brand stores on Paytm
and enable their offline channel to come online," said Amit
Bagaria, associate vice president and mobile and electronics head
at the payment wallet to ecommerce company.
With this, shoppers will get to choose the offline store from
where they want their product. They will also have the option
of either picking up their purchase from the shop or have it delivered.
The Alibaba-backed Paytm has tied up with close to 5,500 stores,
including 4,000 brand exclusive mobile stores and 1,500 stores
of large appliance retailers. These stores can list their products
and selling price on Paytm platform.
"We are first working on the electronics segment since there
are a fixed set of SKUs. Soon we will be rolling it out in other
categories," said Bagaria.
Rival marketplace Snapdeal is also looking at giving an option
to its consumers to buy on the platform and get the item delivered
from neighbourhood store or buy it directly from the store through
online guidance.
While deep discounting was once a vital ingredient for ecommerce
companies to increase footfalls, now they seem to be looking at
differentiating themselves with new consumer experiences besides
exclusive products and services.
Recently, Flipkart-owned fashion portal Myntra revamped its app
interface and made it more Facebook-like wherein brands have their
own page, create their own content and can engage with customers.
According to industry experts, brands are struggling to stand
out as the online market is flooded with hundreds of options.
Bagaria said many marketers want to use analytics and numbers
and accordingly launch newer products. "Hence we will provide
them with the data based on their virtual brand store where they
can create content and talk about the brand," he said, adding
that the company is moving away from flash-sale-model and will
work on helping brands connect with their potential customers.
As per a joint report by Boston Consulting Group and Retailers
Association of India, more than 400 million customers could potentially
be digitally influenced by 2020, accounting for about 25% of total
retail spend. Digitally influenced spenders research products
and pricing online while purchasing them either offline or online,
it said.
Devangshu Dutta, CEO at retail consultancy Third Eyesight
said, "The hybrid model (offline to online) helps ecommerce
companies to co-participate in the business opportunity. The benefit
of having offline retailers on board helps them have distributed
inventory and thereby improve their flexibility of doing business."
(Published in The
Economic Times)
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