//
Shopsity is an O2O retail company that connects customers to fashion retailers in their vicinity
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.
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. We would like to welcome Danish and Gaurav to Paytm and our offline merchants team. I am confident this acquisition will offer further momentum to our online-to-offline commerce segment.”
Shopsity’s Ahmed said, “Paytm is doing phenomenal stuff in the offline commerce space, and we are very excited to join the team and build a platform that enables small retailers to ride the digital wave. Millions of retailers are using Paytm to accept payments today, and we’re working hard to bring an entire suite of digital services to them.”
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. Paytm is headquartered in New Delhi NCR.
The company’s investors include Ant Financials (Alipay), Alibaba Group, SAIF Partners, Sapphire Venture, Mediatek and Silicon Valley Bank.
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.
The post Alibaba-backed Paytm acqui-hires Shopsity to strengthen O2O offerings appeared first on e27.
from e27 http://ift.tt/2fCHgUG