Paytm to invest Rs 250 crore on subscription service

By

Maverick Martins

Published
Mar 5, 2019

Paytm is looking to strengthen its market position in the country by acquiring new customers for growth and has earmarked an investment of Rs 250 crore to launch its own subscription program ‘Paytm First’.

Patym Mall, owned by Paytm E-Commerce, is currently the third biggest player in India's rapidly-growing online retail space after Amazon and Flipkart. With its new service, Paytm is looking to make deeper inroads into the e-commerce market and aims to acquire 3 million subscribers in the first year.
 
Amazon India leads the subscription game in India with its Prime program, while Flipkart is trying to play catch up with its recently launched ‘Plus’ program.

Paytm will offer its annual subscription at Rs 750 as compared to Amazon’s Rs 999 for its prime offering. It remains to be seen if Paytm can manage to get subscribers for its new service as a similar attempt by Flipkart had failed earlier forcing it to offer its Plus service for free.
 
“We will aggressively market this subscription product. We have already seen merchants joining us with as much as 80 percent discount on pricing of their products and services to be part of Paytm First,” Deepak Abbot, senior vice president at Paytm told the Times of India.
 
Paytm is focusing on customer acquisition for growth in the India market and targeting 500 million customers from its existing 300 million customers over the next three years.