Paytm eyes to bring 10 million merchants on ONDC platform in next two years: Vijay Shekhar Sharma

livemint.com:

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, CEO and founder of Paytm parent One97 Communications, Monday said the company is considering bringing 10 million merchants by 2025 on the government-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce platform, adding that the firm has seen close to 11.8 million customers routed to its product from the platform, news agency PTI reported. "Paytm's ecosystem is built around small merchants and the mission that we are on is to help small merchants and small businesses become part of the mainstream economy. We did it by payments.

Everybody to whom we have given new payments wants to have new customers. That is when ONDC comes. We plan to bring 10 million merchants on ONDC before 2025 ends," Paytm founder said on the sidelines of an ONDC event.

It may be noted that Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) is a government-backed platform which is open for all e-commerce stakeholders to onboard their service. Digital payment firms like Paytm, PhonePe's Pincode, and hyperlocal e-commerce firm magicpin are present on this platform. Sharma further noted that ONDC has more than 10 million customers onboard which is one-fifth of the total e-commerce market in the country.

"If you bring a large number of merchants, customers are out there and searching for them. Obviously, the issue of trust and discovery has to be sorted out but there are a large number of customers who are ready to come online and shop," the report quoted Sharma as saying. ONDC managing director and CEO, T Koshy said that the government-backed platform has started its operations recently.

"In January we had around 1,200 transactions. This month we have almost 5 million transactions. We have found transactions are happening from 600 cities already.