Retail in Asia

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Paytm acquires Shopsity to strengthen O2O offerings

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India’s leading mobile payments and commerce platform Paytm has acqui-hired Shopsity, a Delhi-based startup that offers O2O solutions to small retail stores, after it reportedly shut down.

This move is in line with Paytm’s vision to create strong seller-focused services for its offline merchants.

Founded by Danish Ahmed and Gaurav Arya, Shopsity is focused on small unorganised retailers, providing them with tools to attract and retain customers. The startup had raised seed funding last year from Sandeep Aggarwal, founder and former CEO of ShopClues, and Teruhide Sato, Founder of Beenos.

SEE ALSO: Paytm to raise $300 million, valuation likely to hit $5 bn  

Post the deal, Ahmed and Arya have joined Paytm’s management and are actively working to strengthen seller services for the 800,000 strong offline sellers on the Paytm ecosystem.

Madhur Deora, CFO at Paytm, said: “Shopsity has done a great job at providing innovative solutions to small offline retailers. By integrating their technology with our advanced seller services, we will be able to offer additional solutions to our fast-growing family of small offline merchants.

With the current user base of more than 150 million, Paytm is on a mission to bring half a billion Indians into the mainstream of the economy using mobile payment, commerce and soon to be launched payment banking services.

Recently, Paytm has appointed K. Guru Gowrappan, Global Managing Director of Alibaba Group, to its Board as Additional Director. Days before this development, Paytm roped in Mark Schwartz, Vice Chairman of the Goldman Sachs Group and Chairman of Goldman Sachs in Asia-Pacific, to its Board.

As per a recent report, Paytm is in advanced talks with a slew of investors to raise between US$300 million and US$350 million in fresh funding.

(Source: e27)