Festive Sales: Paytm Mall Strengthens Top Deck With New Hires From Startups

Paytm Mall, the online shopping platform owned by digital payments giant Paytm, has announced that it has brought startup leaders on board in order to strengthen its management team ahead of its annual festive sale. Paytm Mall will lock horns with ecommerce giants Flipkart and Amazon India in the upcoming annual festive sales in October.

As part of this hiring round, Paytm has brought in Srinivas Mothey from GiftingNation (social gifting platform), Milind Pathak from Httpool (ad network), Nikhil Dhoka from BrownTape (multi-channel inventory management), Utkrisht Kumar from Hopscotch (ecommerce platform), and Rohan Chhazed from, ZoomCar (self-drive car rental startup).

Amit Sinha, Chief Operating Officer, Paytm Mall, said, “With the recent addition to our senior management, we are strengthening our business team to expand our operations, build innovative solutions, and offer more consumer-focused products and services.”

The announcement came at a time when global retailer Walmart is redeploying some of its key executives to its latest acquired subsidiary, Flipkart. Reports surfaced last month that Walmart has deployed four of its senior executives in leading positions in Flipkart.

Driving Growth Through New Hires

According to Paytm, the new joinees bring 80 years of combined experience in different sectors such as business, technology, product, and more.

According to the new roles assigned to the executives, Srinivas is responsible for heading the marketing function as the Vice President at Paytm Mall while Pathak has been appointed as Senior Vice President, Brand Monetization, and is responsible for multiple projects in category or monetisation and partnerships.

With nearly 12 years of experience in product management and ecommerce, Dhoka will be responsible for managing the complete seller ecosystem as Associate Vice President of Paytm Mall.

Further, Kumar, one of the founding members of Hopscotch, has been appointed at the same designation as Dhoka and is working with the cross-border team at Paytm Mall while ZoomCar’s Chhazed is heading the General Merchandise category.

This is not the first time that the company is seeking to strengthen its senior management team this year.

In July, Paytm Mall had bolstered its senior management and announced the appointment of senior executives such as Sanjeev Misra as Senior Vice President, International Markets; Vikram Kher as Vice President, Mobile Business; Suresh Vasudevan as Vice President, Technology, and Manjunath CK as Vice President, Electronics.

According to reports, Paytm Mall has plans to ramp up its employee base to 1,200 from the current 900 by the end of the year.

Paytm Mall: Growth And Expansion

In a recent official statement, Paytm Mall announced that it has reached over 1 Mn orders in a day during its pre-festive sale. It also stated that the company has entered into a strategic partnership with Apple to make the entire range of iPhones available on its platform including the latest iPhone Xs and Xs Max.

Paytm Mall is yet to confirm the launch date of its festive season sale. According to a Livemint report, Paytm Mall’s festive advertising to promote the sale is expected to start from October and continue till the end of the year. Meanwhile, its rivals, Flipkart and Amazon, are spending millions on advertisements and campaigns for their festive season sales.

According to the report, India’s biggest online companies are expected to spend a total of INR 400 crore on advertising to promote their festive sales, an increase of 10% increase over last year.

Here are some facts about the rise of Paytm Mall:

• As of June 2018, Paytm Ecommerce, which runs Paytm Mall, had achieved $3.5 Bn in annualised gross sales
• Paytm Mall is targeting a three-fold rise in annualised gross sales and is set to achieve the $10 Bn mark by March 2019
• It is aiming to clock business worth $78 Mn (INR 500 Cr) by the year-end with its new retail model
• Paytm Mall is also looking at working with offline stores and has partnered with brands such as Samsung, LG, Lenovo, Intel, Red Tape, Canon, HP, Godrej, and Hitachi

With the festive season sales right upon us, India’s ecommerce players are doing all they can to ace the sales and increase their gross merchandising value (GMV) this season. In September, Amazon India reportedly reduced both its storage charges as well as seller fee in five categories in order to encourage vendors to stock more products ahead of its festive season sale.

Also, this year, Flipkart, buoyed by global retailer Walmart’s support both in terms of funding and retail expertise, is aiming to shoot ahead of its competitors and claim a wider share of the market.

As the competition heats up, Paytm Mall’s efforts to strengthen its management with the new hires seems like an apt strategy, but are the hirings are too last-minute to help it gain a better foothold in the market this season? We will know soon.