Paytm Mall sharpens focus on tech support to SMEs

Initiatives to educate and promote vendors will be key for online retailers

Paytm Mall, which has recently claimed 20 per cent of the sales this festive season, has said it has focused on “democratising online access” by offering technology support to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that are at the core of retail. The e-commerce marketplace, which is the newest entrant in a highly competitive sector, had delisted 85,000 sellers earlier this year for failure to meet quality norms and now has 30,000 sellers.

Amit Sinha, chief operating officer, Paytm Mall, says the company has enabled thousands of reputed shopkeepers to sell their own inventory, locally branded products as well as brand-authorised merchandise, and empowered them with logistics and GST (goods and services tax) training. Besides digitising the catalogues of trusted retailers, it is providing them with Paytm Mall QR codes to facilitate a seamless product discovery experience. It also allows them to set the return, exchange and refund policies for products they sell on the platform. “We succeed if they succeed, because our partnerships with them help us bring newer categories to consumers and gives us access to a large inventory stocked in our partner retailers’ stores,” he says.

The marketplace, launched six months ago, says it has closed in on its target of an annualised gross merchandise value run rate of $4 billion by the year-end. Its offline-to-online model has contributed 40 per cent of order volume during the festive sales. As it aims to drive repeat transactions, what are the measures that established names in e-commerce are following to on-board more and more sellers and work closely with them?

For Amazon India, the attempt is to equip sellers of different scale and sizes across segments to do good business during the festive season. Gopal Pillai, general manager and director of seller services, Amazon India, says it has added over 2,500 new sellers every week since August. This year, the company came up with a host of initiatives to promote sellers.

For instance, last month it hosted a flagship national seller conference in Delhi to provide sellers an integrated platform to interact closely with Amazon.in’s senior leadership. Its seller app also has played a crucial role in getting more vendors on board, with over 70 per cent coming from tier-II and III cities. It also launched a dedicated microsite, Amazon Sellerbration. The microsite has information on offers and deals sellers can avail of, tips to succeed, important timelines (sale dates, training schedules, webinars, classroom sessions), and seller testimonial videos to encourage them.

“We also launched a 360-degree marketing campaign for our sellers. Our campaign was to drive seller acquisitions and also encourage existing Amazon sellers to increase their selection of products,” says Pillai.

Since its launch in India in June 2013, Amazon has registered over 225,000 sellers. Interestingly, the first one lakh joined in the first three years.

To make Amazon India more scalable and reach sellers across metros, semi-metros and tier-II and III cities, it has launched several programmes. For instance, under Amazon Chai Cart four-wheeler mobile carts navigate a city’s business districts and serve business owners. Each cart has trained personnel who hold discussions with interested sellers on selling online and introducing them to our seller-specific services. Other measures include Amazon Tatkal (a one-stop-shop on the go to help businesses get online), seller university, Fulfilment by Amazon (help sellers increase online sales by granting access to Amazon’s fulfilment resources) and a host of others.

For Urban Ladder, a close relationship with vendors is critical, given that it is in a largely unorganised segment like furniture. “We’re putting in place financial planning mechanisms and aids for the vendors, so they are better able to account for their own operations and revenue. For GST, we prepared them for the onset of the regulations before it was implemented so they could align their accounting practices. This buffered the possible financial hit they would’ve taken under GST. This kind of knowledge transfer and service provision also fosters more transparent, efficient, and profitable business model for SMEs,” says Kaustabh Chakraborty, senior vice-president, operations and supply chain, Urban Ladder.

He adds that it’s vital to align the partners to the company’s financial goals. “We share our sales projections with them so that they can better plan for the manpower and operating costs. With regards to inventory management, we benefit equally from helping them procure the raw material locally and internationally because then we have more control over the quality of the product and the end-to-end process.”