Paytm Mall sets aside Rs 501 crore for marketing budget during festive sales

New Delhi: Paytm Mall, operated by Paytm E-commerce Pvt. Ltd, plans to offer cashbacks worth more than Rs 501 crore in the run-up to the festive season sales this Diwali. The online retailer’s major sale event called the ‘Mera Cash Back Sale’, which coincides with Flipkart’s Big Billion Days and Amazon’s Great Indian Festival, will run from 9-15 October, the company said in a statement.

Paytm Mall had lined up offers of over Rs 701 crore in its first major sales event last year in September.

Paytm E-commerce, One97 Communications’ standalone unit that raised funding from Japan’s Softbank Group Corp and existing investor Alibaba Group Holding Ltd in April, has been aggressively ramping up its online commerce operations through various brand partnerships, boosting its technology and onboarding new sellers. It claims to have more than 1 lakh vendors on its platform currently.

Paytm Mall, currently the third biggest player in India’s rapidly growing online retail space, is banking on categories such as mobiles, laptops, large appliances and phones along with FMCG products to drive growth this season.

Paytm claims a run rate of over $4 billion in GMV (gross merchandising value) and says it is aiming for a $10 billion run rate at the end of fiscal 2018-2019 in its efforts to garner a bigger slice of India’s expanding online retail market, Mint reported.

“Our team has been engaged in the preparation of this sale for the past three months where they have partnered with top brands, meticulously planned and scaled operations while building logistics to give users the best shopping experience and best offers on a wide range of products,” chief operating officer Amit Sinha said.

The Vijay Shekhar Sharma-controlled company, which has so far played to its strengths—offering cash back offers and an offline-to-online strategy, expects 35-40% of its festive season sales to come from the O2O model, it said.

Paytm Mall has also partnerted with online grocery startup BigBasket to compete with Walmart Inc.-controlled Flipkart and Amazon.com Inc.’s local unit, Reuters reported.

One97 Communications Ltd, the parent entity that owns brand Paytm, turned the e-commerce business into a new mobile application and website in February 2017. The platform Paytm Mall is inspired by Alibaba’s T-mall in China.

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