Paytm to invest in support of women entrepreneurs

New Delhi: Paytm, India’s largest mobile payments and commerce platform, is investing in encouraging women entrepreneurs who have taken a digital stride through their platform. As a part of this initiative, the marketplace has started a host of initiatives to encourage the sellers. The company has invited selected women sellers from across India (Karnataka, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi/NCR) to interact with their senior management in forumalting a long term future roadmap for supporting women entrepreneurs in the country.

The explosive growth of e-commerce in the country has enabled many entrepreneurs to have a nation wide reach and also created a platform where they can build their brand. The ‘Make in India’ initiative by the government has played a critical role in supporting such entrepreneurs and Paytm strongly backs the initiative.

Paytm currently has over 1 lakh sellers and aims to have 5 lakh active sellers by the end of next year. The marketplace provides a great platform for sales to these sellers as it has 120mn registered wallet users with 1/3rd of them being active in a month. The platform also enables sellers to reach to more than 31000 pin codes in the country and has recently started a host of initiatives which help sellers grow which include financial support, Paytm Force and PaytmGoBig.com.Sudanshu Gupta, Vice-President of Paytm said, “We have successfully built a merchant preferred platform where there are no direct or surrogate inventory models. We will be the largest platform in the country where sellers will be able to reach out to consumers in their local markets through O2O (local marketing capabilities with a solution of payments and faster local deliveries) and national consumers through our courier tie ups.”

He further said, “We have seen a lot of women entrepreneurs register on our platform and take a keen interest in participating in the online growth story. They come from very diverse platforms and regions that include homemakers, career women even instagram sellers. While we have invited some of them to come to our office and share their success stories and learnings, we also plan to roll out promotions and financial services for them. We plan to invest Rs. 15 cr in the next few months behind these initiatives.”

Paytm salutes these women achievers who comes from varied backgrounds and have left their existing line of work to become business owners. Their stories reflect real empowerment where women have taken decisions on their own and become self-reliant by embracing technology. Gita Sureka from Bangalore was a cost accounting manager who created a business with an opportunity in a single product. Urvashi from Kataan Bazaar’shouse of weavers in Benares, the online platform has proved to be an opportunity to create a national brand. KiranBadhe and her team of 120+ under privileged women, took the opportunity to sell the handicraft products online. Priya from Super India Emporium and Neha Sahoo of Office Solution have exploited their professional experience to start their own ventures with the Digital platform.