Vijay Shekhar Sharma led Paytm has signed up more than 1,000 brands like Samsung, Dell, Whirlpool, Woodland, Lakme, Casio and Puma, to open up exclusive online stores on its platform.
The announcement comes a week after top ecommerce player Flipkart said it is wooing some of the most-popular electronic and apparel brands including HP, Wildcraft, Peter England, Bosch and @Home with a new offering that allows them to create ‘stores’ on its digital marketplace.
The online brand stores are independent online retail stores wherein brands can control the sellers who are selling in their store, inventory, pricing and promotions. They will also be able to run promotional campaigns and tag their physical stores, enabling them to generate sales for their offline channel through this online store.
Brand stores are not a new concept. Snapdeal started it in 2012. Flipkart and Amazon also have it, but not on the scale that Paytm is envisaging. “For them it’s about giving brands a little more visibility, but for us its out core strategy,” said Bagaria, a former Flipkart executive.
Paytm has two categories – structured (branded products) and unstructured (non-branded products). For the unstructured it will continue to have a long tail of retailers. “But, in the next six months we will move 90% of all structured products to brand stores… This will help in regulating unathourised discounts and curb frauds,” said Bagaria.