Paytm acqui-hires Shopsity

Paytm, India’s largest mobile payments and commerce platform has acquired the team at Shopsity, a Delhi based startup that offered O2O solutions to small retail stores. This move is in line with Paytm vision to create strong seller focused services to its offline merchants.

Shopsity is focused on small unorganized retailers, providing them with tools to attract and retain customers. Paytm is actively working to strengthen seller services for the 800,000 strong offline sellers on the Paytm ecosystem. Launched in March 2015, Shopsity is an O2O mobile platform, where you get to see what’s selling in stores nearby. During July last year, the platform had raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Shopclues and Droom, and Netprice.

In July, Paytm started accepting payments at retail chains like Spencer’s Retail, Heritage Fresh, More, WH Smith, Kendriya Bhandar, V2 Retail, Value Plus and Pai International (Pai Mobile). This followed its tie-up with quick-service-restaurants such as KFC, Pizza Hut, Cafe Coffee Day, Costa Coffee, Barista, Vaango, among others. Paytm claims to have 125 million wallets.

In September, Paytm had acqui-hired EduKart, an e-learning marketplace for an undisclosed amount. In January this year, Paytm acquired Shifu, a consumer behavior prediction platform for an undisclosed amount. A month before that, the company acquired Gurgaon-based services marketplace Near.in for $2 million.

Paytm Acquires Near.in

Mobile wallet and e-commerce company Paytm has bought home service marketplace Near.in for an undisclosed amount. The move is part of its increasing focus on online to offline (O2O) and Hyperlocal commerce. The company expects more than half of its sales to come from the Hyperlocal channel by 2016.

Near.in (run by Thumbspot Inc.), which connects users with local businesses for home services through a marketplace app, was founded in December 2014. It last raised a seed funding of $300,000 by a group of Angel investors. Other than this there are investors from Healthkart, SAP Labs, and Aspiring Minds. Near has a significant network of local service providers in place and a stellar team leading it.

Paytm is India’s largest mobile commerce platform. With its mobile first strategy, Paytm does more than $100 Million transactions of various digital and physical goods every month. Paytm Wallet is India’s dominant mobile Paytm service platform. Based in Delhi-NCR, its investors include Ant Financials (AliPay), SAIF partners, Sapphire Venture and Silicon Valley Bank.

The company also plans to venture into travel with Hotel, air and rail ticket bookings in partnership with online travel companies such as Goibibo and Yatra and budget accommodation marketplaces OYO Rooms and ZO Rooms. The company already sells bus tickets. Apart from tying up with online travel partners, the company will also allow offline travel agents to list on its platform.