MagicPin eyeing gross merchandise value of Rs 24,000 crore in 2 years

Offline discovery and rewards platform MagicPin is eyeing an annual gross merchandise value (GMV) of nearly Rs 24,000 crore by the end of 2020, up from about Rs 3,000 crore at present.

Launched in 2015, MagicPin was valued at an enterprise value of $100 million last year when its parent Samast Technologies raised about $20 million from investors led by US-based fund house Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Currently, the startup is logging a GMV of nearly Rs 250 crore per month in offline sales and rewards points redeemed, company co-founder and CEO Anshoo Sharma told Business Standard on Thursday.

With the aid of modern technology, the company helps offline retail stores in local markets augment their customer reach and repeat purchases by taking a social media-friendly approach.

The platform currently has 0.8 million retailers in its network, which MagicPin is planning to increase to 2 million by December 2020.

“We are investing liberally in our technology matrix, which accounts for 20% of our total spend,” he said, adding that the company had an in-house 70 member technology and research team based in Delhi.

While the company has logged 4x growth in GMV over the past 12 months, Sharma noted that there was a huge untapped potential in the domestic offline retail segment, pegged at more than $1 trillion.

“Even today, nearly 90% of commercial transactions take place in cash,” he said, adding that the backend technology architecture of MagicPin was aimed at gaining traction of this huge transactional value through data mining and artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

At present, MagicPin processes close to 3 million retail transactions every month, which the company analyses for understanding consumer behaviour and shopping preferences. The meaningful data is later shared with big retailers and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) majors to help them cater to the markets even faster and with products and services categories, which are in demand.

Meanwhile, MagicPin on Thursday formally entered the Uttar Pradesh market by launching its office in Lucknow. It aims to expand footprint in other major UP cities, including Kanpur, Varanasi, Allahabad, Bareilly, Agra etc.

So far, it has marked its presence in 50 major cities, including Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Goa, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Pune etc.

“The top segments on our platform include food, fashion and grocery, accounting for almost 90% of the total GMV,” Sharma informed.

“Although, 80% of our GMV emerges from the top 4 metro cities, we expect the tier II and III towns to account for 35% of GMV in the next 2 years due to our aggressive expansion strategy in the smaller towns and cities across the country,” he said.

Recently, the company strengthened its leadership crew by roping in senior executives to head different verticals of finance, merchandise, retail, brands etc.