Paytm plans to add over 1 lakh sellers, hire 4500

NEW DELHI: The poster boys of Indian e-tailing, Flipkart and Snapdeal, might soon have tough competition from mobile wallet brand Paytm. Amidst rumours of fresh fund infusion,Paytm is looking to aggressively ramp up its mobile marketplace by adding over one lakh merchants in one year. 

It also has plans of hiring 4,500 people across various verticals during same period, according to Renu Satti, VP, business development, Paytm. Snapdeal has around one lakh sellers on its market place. 

"From sales and product and engineering to logistics and customer service, we are looking at candidates across all categories and hierarchies," she said. "And with regards to merchants, apart from retailers across geographies, we are also focusing on SMEs such as Dharavi Market among many others." 

At present, Paytm, which is owned by Noida-based One97 Communications and headed by its chairman and MD Vijay Shekhar Sharma, has around 2,000 employees on its payroll and 15,000 sellers on its market place. It started its journey in 2010 as a mobile recharge and bill payment service and later started diversifying into wallets and other electronic payment services. 

"We have the advantage of having the trust of the consumer as well as the merchant because of our RBI licensed wallet," said Satti when asked about competition from well-entrenched players in the country's e-tailing business. Paytm received the wallet service license from RBI last year and has around 20 million active users, more than the number of credit card users in the country, according to industry estimates. It has plans of touching 100 million users by 2016. 

Mobile wallet companies such as Paytm, Oxigen and Citrus allow users to fill money into their electronic wallets and engage in transactions with merchants who have partnerships with a mobile wallet service provider. From the 1-2 million recharge transactions that Paytm does every day, conversion of even a small percentage of that into sales of products might be a big opportunity to begin with for the venture that has the backing of names like SAIF Partners, SAP Ventures and Intel Capital among others. 

Tata Group plans e-commerce marketplace foray under Ashutosh Pandey

NEW DELHI: Tata Group has started putting together a team for its proposed big-bang foray into e-commercemarketplace under Ashutosh Pandey, former COO of the Group's bookstore chain Landmark.

The Group has also roped in Sarvesh Dwivedi, who has been heading the lifestyle division of eBay India, three people familiar with Tatas' plans told ET. Gurvinderjit Singh Samra, who has worked with Tata Group's different arms, including its life-science and healthcare unit, Titan and Indian Hotels, has joined the e-commerce team, two of them said. "Obviously there is a small team as things are currently being sketched," one of them said.

Latif Nathani, managing director of eBay India, confirmed the departure of Dwivedi from the company, but said he is not sure where Dwivedi is headed. Prior to eBay, Dwivedi worked with Myntra.com and Reliance Retail among other firms.

ET had in September reported that the Tatas are preparing for an entry into India's lucrative e-commerce business with a marketplace model similar to Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal. A spokesperson for Tata Sons said that the Group has "interest" in e-commerce, but refused to share details for the proposed venture. "As we had told you on September 22, e-commerce is of interest to the Tata Group, and we will share more information at the appropriate moment," the person said in an emailed reply to ET.

Tatas currently run e-commerce portals for its Croma consumer electronics chain and Landmark bookstores. Its proposed new e-commerce marketplace, which will provide an online platform for small and large vendors and retailers to sell their wares, is expected to be launched next year.

In the initial phase Tata Group plans to sell products from its own brands including Star Bazaar supermarket and Westside department store. The company is also in talks with its joint venture partner Inditex to get Spanish brand Zara on board as well.

E-commerce in India is expected to almost double in two years to $20 billion by 2015 from $11 billion in 2013, according to a just-released report by Motilal Oswal Securities.

E-commerce boom: Why it is increasingly important for physical retailers to upgrade themselves

About a year ago, many — that included some of India's largest organized retailers — were in near denial that India would feel the impact of e-tailing in the near future. Today, the pendulum has swung to the other extreme. Some of India's oldest and largest brick-and-mortar retailers believe that the newly arrived e-tailers are their biggest threat now. Various associations that represent the interests of India's over 16-million independent retailers are now actively lobbying against etailers, including India's homegrown ones. The same associations had long reserved their vitriol only for multinational retailers despite the fact that the top-three organized retail businesses in India, each having revenues in excess of Rs 15,000 crore in 2014, are Indian owned while the largest multinational retailer in India is struggling to cross even Rs 1,000 crore in revenues.

India's current consumer spending on merchandise (and hence the size of India's retail market) is about $525 billion. If India sees a real compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in the next 10 years, and the consumer price inflation remains around 6% CAGR in the same period, India's merchandise retail spending will touch about $1,100 billion by 2020, and $2,100 billion by 2025. It is easy to see what is driving this strong growth in retail consumption — a relatively young population, convergence in lifestyle aspirations across urban and rural India and rise of dual (or multiple) income households especially in urban India.

Consumption Patterns

To better understand the current and future impact of e-tail on India's physical retailers, it is important to gain a measure of what India is currently consuming and how that consumption is split between rural and urban populations.

As the chart Retail Consumption Across KeyCategories shows, even 10 years from now, almost two-thirds of India's retail spending (not total consumer spending because that also includes services such as housing, healthcare, transportation, education etc) is on food, followed by about 9% on apparel, then jewellery, and then consumer electronics, including mobile handsets.

Of this retail spending, rural India (spread across over 6,60,000 villages) accounts for almost 52%. Even by 2025, rural spending would still account for 43% of spending (see Distribution of Consumer Goods Spending). India will see very strong growth in all channels of retail: the traditional independents, the modern corporatized chains, and e-tailing not only in the coming 10 years but indeed, even much beyond that. Those who fear for the demise of traditional retail from corporatized retail (whether Indian or foreign owned) and now from e-tail will do well to note that Indians who are currently consuming merchandise worth $479 billion from independent mom-and-pop stores will consume more than four times (goods worth about $2,125 billion) from these stores by 2025. The corporatized retailers do not have much to fear either and they are likely to increase their own collective revenues (only from physical stores) from about $46 billion today to over $100 billion (excluding e-tail) by 2020 and perhaps over $345 billion (physical retail and e-tail) by 2025.

As far as e-tailing is concerned, notwithstanding its immense appeal for the metros and other parts of urban India, and notwithstanding its visible impact in select categories such as mobile phones and consumer durables, it will continue to have a fairly small share of the overall retail spending in India even after 10 years (see Current and Future Impact of E-tailing in India).

Negligible Share

To put simply, if seen only from the perspective of a few categories such as consumer electronics, apparel and footwear, furniture and home furnishings, and a few others (and that too largely in the top 15-20 cities and for products targeted towards the middle and upper-middle-income socio-economic strata), there is already a measurable impact of e-tail channel on physical stores in 2014. And no doubt, this will become more significant by 2025. However, if seen from the overall consumer spending perspective, the share of the e-tail channel by 2020 is expected to be around 3% on a net sales value (and perhaps 4% by gross merchandise value) and no more than 10% by 2025.

Amazon, e-commerce rivals fuel commercial property boom in India

NEW DELHI: Internet retailer Amazon and its fast-growing local rivals are driving a boom in commercial property leasing in India as their storage needs rise, with shoppers in the country going online to buy everything from televisions to groceries.

Demand from e-commerce firms, a tiny fraction of retail industry, accounted for as much as 40 per cent of 1.7 million square feet of warehouses leased in 2014 - a seven-fold increase from 2013, according to consultants CBRE South Asia. Warehouse rents have risen by a quarter over the past year.

4 hottest jobs in Indian e-commerce industry

User interface developers, e-commerce merchandising specialists, interaction designers and digital marketers to be in demand in the e-commerce industry in the coming years.

The Indian e-commerce industry warmed up in 2014, with a large chunk receiving funding in millions. Companies which received big ticket investments last year include online retailers -Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal, fashion e-tailers - Jabong and Myntra, furniture e-tailer - Urban Ladder and Pepperfry, and baby care portal - Firstcry.

The e-commerce industry is projected to experience a significant growth of 70 per cent, clocking $6 billion revenue in 2015, according to Gartner. To aid such breathtaking growth rate and create a strong foothold in the market, these companies are on a hiring spree. Here is a look at some of the key roles which are in demand in e-commerce.

UI/UX developers: In times when customers demand instant gratification, even a slight technical issue in the website or the mobile app demotivates consumers in buying from the particular site. This is driving the need for coders specialised in creating an intuitive and consistent user experience across different platforms.

"There is a dearth of talented UI developers in the market. Currently, we are looking at hiring UI developers who have 2-5 years of experience and who have the ability to build, test and design e-commerce properties which match global standards," adds Ashu Malhotra, HR Head, Jabong.com.

Interaction designers: The primary role of an interaction designer is to visualise a consumer's journey through the website or app and predict user scenarios and stories.

"Within e-commerce companies, interaction designers have to design specifically for digital natives who have a short attention span. Along with this interaction designers also need to track content consumption, transaction and CRM data to connect the dots and fine tune user experiences. Conceptual skills and creative visualisation abilities will continue to matter along with complementary data driven approaches," said Sridhar Dhulipala, co-founder, Bizosys Technologies, who was previously Principal UI Designer at Infosys.

E-commerce merchandising specialists: These are specialists who need to oversee the daily selling and promotion of the e-commerce site offerings in accordance with its merchandising and marketing plans.

"In an e-commerce business one of the most critical roles is that of an e-commerce merchandising expert who can attract new and varied customer segments by placing the right kind of products on the website. Such people, who have the aptitude to identify new products portfolios, are always in demand within our industry," said Amit Agarwal, head HR & Admin, HomeShop18.

Digital marketers: As competition is intensifying in the e-commerce market, it is not enough to just have an attractive e-commerce and m-commerce website. Reaching out to current and prospective customers through all possible communication channels has become a necessity.

"There is a demand for digital marketing experts who can conceptualise customised content for marketing campaigns designed for diverse media - such as social, mobile and sales enablement platforms. Having compelling creative story telling abilities is an essential trait," shares Abhineet Sawa, digital marketing head at Jabong.com.