//

Photo credit: Steve Jurvetson

NumberMall, a startup that helps offline merchants sell things online, today announced the acquisition of BankSmarts for an undisclosed sum.

NumberMall is one of a number of startups that call themselves an “assisted ecommerce service.” In India, with less than twenty percent of people buying things online, it is a hugely promising sector that connects offline retailers with the world of ecommerce.

Acting as a payment gateway, NumberMall allows merchants to process things like credit top-ups, bill payments, and bus tickets. With the acquisition of BankSmarts, an analytics platform, merchants can now analyze customer behavior based on their purchases.

NumberMall claims to have processed over 30 million interactions..

Assisted ecommerce has lots of meanings

A number of other players are battling in the assisted ecommerce sector in order to help India’s millions of offline sellers connect with buyers. It takes on many different forms.

Kunal Bahl, CEO of Snapdeal, explained earlier this year that more than seventy percent of the ecommerce site’s deals come from non-urban areas. Last year, it launched an assisted ecommerce program that set up 5,000 kiosks across 65 cities and 70,000 rural locations. These kiosks act as hubs for customers to place and pick up their orders.

In October, Flipkart also rolled out its assisted ecommerce model. Flipkart’s version allows customers to test out phones at local hubs before buying them.

This post NumberMall acquires analytics platform to help more merchants get online appeared first on Tech in Asia.

from Tech in Asia » Startups http://ift.tt/1ldsCEx