Paytm Plans To Open About 50k Retail Outlets In India

Paytm seems to take “To change your life; change your habits” quote too seriously. The mobile ecommerce platform has planned to set 30,000 to 50,000 offline retail outlets to help people for a cashless exchange and provide basic customer care. It also plans to hire 4500 more people and add around 10,000 sellers to expand its operations.

According to digital insights the mobile penetration of active internet users in India is 220 Mn, which is of supreme importance to make any business mobile optimized. Paytm utilizes the insights to capture Indian market and make it a cashless economy zone.

Speaking on the plans, Paytm’s Amit Lakhotia, VP-payments, said, “We feel this decision will be evident for the company’s growth. Our plan is to move India from a cash economy to a cashless one. There are number of places where cash can be converted to electronic form. We feel it’s our responsibility to increase customer confidence and make our digital wallet payment system available to a wide user base.”

Paytm plans to bid more users in its digital wallet platform for which the company has ties up with kirana stores to accept digital cash from customers rather than hard cash. Also, in lieu of the company’s growth plans the company has linked their wallet to the banking systems to ease the flow of money through which the wallet user will now evade the transaction cost that were laid during credit cards, debit cards or net banking transfer.

Founded in 2010, Paytm has about 22 Mn app users, which is more than the number of credit card users in this country, with 15,000 merchants accepting its wallet.

The five-year-old company is heavily backed by many international investors like Alibaba and Singapore-based Temasek Holdings which had invested more than $500 Mn in Jan 2015. Last year in Dec 2014 the company announced its foray in International markets too.