Brands
Paytm Mall targets $10 bn annualised gross sales by 2019
MUMBAI With the aim to garner a bigger slice of India’s growing online retail market, Paytm Mall, owned by Paytm e-commerce, has ramped-up its efforts to expand the business. The company is aiming for a three-fold rise in annualised gross sales and aims to achieve the $10 billion mark by March 2019.
Paytm e-commerce, which runs the online marketplace, achieved $3.5 billion in annualised gross sales in June 2018. This robust performance has made it a strong No. 3 contender in the local e-commerce market within a year of its launch. By March’19, Paytm Mall expects unit orders to jump to 1-1.5 million orders per day, from about 625,000 currently.
Paytm Mall has raised about $650 million since its inception in April 2017. During its latest fundraise the company raised about $450 million from Japan’s SoftBank Group, and it is currently valued at about $2 billion. Shareholders in Paytm e-commerce include Alibaba Group, Ant Financial, SAIF Partners and founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma.
For Paytm Mall, the largest categories by value include appliances, laptops, and mobiles with the daily needs category generating the maximum number of orders. The company plans to expand its fashion and home business this year. Paytm Mall plans to create differentiation in the market by not having an inventory-led business model. Instead, it aims to promote the O2O (offline to online) model in India.
It currently offers same-day delivery and O2O deliveries in the top 15 cities including New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad. The company plans to further expand its services to 25 cities including Kota, Jabalpur, Dehradun, and Indore, among others by Diwali.
Paytm Mall COO Amit Sinha says, “We are excited to witness the growth of the Indian retail market and we have ramped up our efforts to expand our business to meet its ever-growing demands. We are building an O2O model offering same day deliveries to top 15 cities and will be further expanding our services to 25 cities across the country. Our partnership with brands/merchants and their offline retail stores is driving an important opportunity for them to increase their business while building engagement with their customers.”
Paytm Mall’s O2O operating model is aiming to leverage India’s 15 million offline retail shops to participate in India’s e-commerce boom. The company currently works with offline stores in partnership with brands such as Samsung, LG, Lenovo, Intel, Red Tape, Canon, HP, Godrej, and Hitachi.
Brands
Faber-Castell India appoints Sunaina Haldar as director – marketing
With stints at Tata, SleepyCat and ADF Foods under her belt, Haldar is primed to redraw Faber-Castell’s brand story
MUMBAI: Faber-Castell India has poached Sunaina Haldar from ADF Foods, appointing her director – marketing as the German stationery brand looks to muscle up in a category that is rapidly reinventing itself around creativity and self-expression.
Haldar hit the ground running. “My first couple of weeks have been incredibly energising, understanding consumers, visiting markets, engaging with retailers and immersing myself into the world of Faber-Castell Group,” she said.
She arrives with considerable firepower. At ADF Foods, Haldar ran marketing across India and international markets for a portfolio spanning Ashoka, Aeroplane, Camel and ADF Soul. Before that, she was vice-president – marketing at direct-to-consumer mattress brand SleepyCat, where she helmed brand, content and performance marketing. Her résumé also includes a stint leading marketing, new product development and CRM for Tata SmartFoodz at Tata Consumer Products, no small proving ground.
Between corporate roles, Haldar also operated as a fractional CMO for early-stage startups, building marketing strategy and operational structures from scratch, a signal that she knows how to move fast with limited resources.
With 18 years straddling FMCG, D2C and the startup world, Haldar now takes the reins at a brand that has long owned the classroom but is clearly hungry for the living room. In a stationery market where the pencil has become a lifestyle statement, Faber-Castell has picked someone who knows exactly how to sell that story.
