Covid-19 impact: Paytm Mall plans to partner with over 10,000 small shops

Paytm Mall said on Sunday that it will partner with over 10,000 kirana or local stores, small shops, and businesses for hyperlocal deliveries, joining a growing race amongst e-commerce firms to remain relevant amid the ongoing coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.

Its larger rivals- Amazon and Walmart-owned Flipkart - have also announced similar plans. Reliance JioMart's partnership with WhatsApp is also a step in the same direction.

Paytm Mall has been investing in scaling its hyperlocal operations over the last few weeks and is now offering delivery of grocery essentials in more than 100 cities across the country and plans to scale it to more cities within the next few weeks.

"Paytm Mall has always advocated a 100 per cent marketplace model of operation against an inventory-led one as pursued by other major players. Our objective is to connect neighbourhood offline stores to interested customers far and wide through our e-commerce platform. We are constantly reaching out to smaller sellers to understand the challenges they are facing in stocking inventory as well as the delivery of goods," said Srinivas Mothey, Senior Vice President, Paytm Mall.

Currently, Paytm Mall is working with all leading logistics players including GATI, Ecom Express, Delhivery, Bluedart, FedEx.

In a statement, Paytm Mall further said that as more fulfillment and delivery executives of logistics partners resume work, more orders would be eligible for same-day delivery.

According to the company, there has been a massive uptick in the sales in grocery essentials from Tier-II and Tier-III towns as over 200 such cities are ordering the most on Paytm Mall.

Cities Including Indore, Ahmedabad, NCR, Bengaluru, Lucknow, Pune, Chennai, Ludhiana, Bathinda, have all seen a rise in orders.

Many local stores have the inventory, but are running short on manpower as many of their employees have returned to their hometowns. Paytm Mall is connecting them with their logistics partners so that they can deliver to their customers and keep their businesses running. The company said that grocery store owners are seeing almost 50 per cent additional orders per day.

It is not just e-commerce firms, but also players like Zomato, Uber and other who are partnering with FMCG giants and local stores alike to provide doorstep delivery of essential grocery.