Mobile payments company Paytm plans to spin off its marketplace business into a new app in the next three months. The new firm has not been named yet.
"Marketplace is a critical component of our business. We have grown significantly to create an independent firm," founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma was quoted as saying by Mint. Last month, Paytm tied up with more than a 1,000 brands, including Dell, HTC, Woodlands, Casio and Puma, to set up an exclusive store on its e-commerce platform. The brands would reportedly manage themselves, Hindustan Times reported.
The news of the new subsidiary comes at a time when China's e-commerce giant Alibaba (also an investor in Paytm) is reportedly planning to start its India operations by the end of 2016.
At present, Paytm's e-commerce marketplace gets about two million orders every month and the company expects the figure to grow to about five million by the end of the present fiscal year (March 2017). The company also expects to double the number of merchants, from the present around 1,25,000, by the next year.
Paytm, which is mainly known to be a mobile payments and mobile recharge app, has expanded its e-commerce space over the last one year. It now sells smartphones, clothes, footwear, gadgets and other products.
