e-commerce
Paytm to hire over 10,000 agents to onboard offline merchants
MUMBAI: Paytm is looking to hire over 10,000 Paytm agents as it seeks to aggressively expand its offline merchant network to over 20 lakh touch-points by the end of the current fiscal year.
Paytm’s cashless payments are widely accepted across India owing to the ease, convenience and safety they offer. Thanks to the country’s overwhelming response to Paytm, it is setting bolder targets to acquire more offline merchants in the coming months.
Paytm SVP Amit Sinha said, “As millions of consumers across India have taken to using their Paytm Wallets to transact offline, our biggest opportunity is to be available in every town and city in the country. We want to reach there faster, are looking to further strengthen our onboarding teams as we continue to build India’s biggest payments network.”
Brick-and-mortar merchants and other online-to-offline sectors present a huge opportunity for Paytm to integrate its fast, secure and convenient payment solution. The company has recently registered unprecedented growth in offline payments. The Paytm platform saw an overwhelming 435% increase in overall traffic within hours of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi announcing his plans to have a corruption-free India. This is a great showcase of how fast consumers across the country are taking to the ease, convenience and safety Paytm’s cashless payments offer.
MUMBAI: From flights to tracks, Cleartrip is now trying to keep every journey on the same ticket. Cleartrip, part of Flipkart, has launched train ticket bookings through a partnership with Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, marking its entry into India’s vast rail travel ecosystem.
The integration allows users to search, book and manage train journeys directly within the app, as the company pushes towards becoming a unified, multi-modal travel platform. The move plugs Cleartrip into one of the world’s largest transportation networks, where over 800 million reserved passengers travel annually, alongside a daily footfall of around 23 million across Indian Railways.
The offering includes bookings across routes nationwide, covering General and Tatkal quotas as per Ministry of Railways guidelines. Users can also access real-time seat availability, fare insights, PNR status tracking, berth preferences and digital payment options within a single interface.
The expansion reflects a broader shift in travel platforms from specialising in a single mode to stitching together end-to-end journeys. For Cleartrip, the bet is not just on scale, but on simplifying a system often seen as complex and fragmented.
Company executives said the focus is on embedding predictive intelligence and personalisation into the booking journey, aiming to make everything from discovery to post-booking support faster and more intuitive.
The train booking feature is currently live on the app, with plans to extend it to the web platform soon, signalling a push towards a seamless cross-platform experience.
In a country where railways move billions each year, the next battleground for travel apps may well be decided not in the skies, but on the tracks.
