Sometimes, it may happen that physical cash will not always be available in the hands of customers and there is a lot of problems it arises for buying or selling any product. Even, though most of the customers might face this problem regarding payment of university fees, tuition fees, bills, recharge, restaurant bills, and so on. During the time of demonetization, almost more than 95% of people used to believe in monetary transactions and many of them were not believe in those online transactions as it was not secure. Later, the concept of an E-commerce digital platform was adopted and that’s why Paytm plays an especially important role in this context. Paytm considers being one of India’s largest e-commerce or wallet Payment Company which transform the history of the payment industry and also transform the lives of every individual from the physical mode of money to digital money.
It was started in the year 2010 by one of the famous Indian Businessmen Mr. Vijay Shekhar Sharma who is currently the CEO of Paytm and powered by One 97 communications Ltd. When it was first launched in the market, it was not an easy task but rather much more difficult for the company to bring trust in the mindset of people to convince them to switch to online transactions. It struggled a lot at the initial phase of the start-up and the later step that Paytm took jump was a phenomenon. They changed their plan course of action and strategy to convert into a commercial center, later they created a virtual bank platform called Paytm bank where people can open their accounts and keep their money safe. Later, it launched the Paytm wallet system, Paytm gold, online recharge, investment, QR codes facility, cashback, offers, and so on. All these things are combined and put together into one website so that it becomes easier and accessible for everyone to use, and the mobile application was designed. This helped to establish a corporate image that allows more investors to provide more funding for the company. In this way, both the businesses as well as people are getting benefitted to increase share in the market. Paytm is now being used everywhere including vegetable shops, food suppliers, Kirana stores, etc.
Business Aspects and Expansion
The Motto of Paytm
Once, Paytm had successfully flourished in the market, they found that to expand their revenue stream from the public people, they must give prior importance to people carefully. They began the customer-centric approach. The reason behind this customer-centric approach was adopted because when Paytm launched their e-wallet services for customers before that, they developed 24/ 7 customer service to address the problems. The concept of digital payments was something new for customers. It might happen that if they do not get full guidance and support, then they will never know how to operate Paytm and that was the most challenging task for them. So, the company spent around Rs. 14,500 crore along with that they had contributed their skills and manpower well enough to motivate, convince customers to substitute the physical mode of cash with digital payment.
When the company launched Paytm wallet in the year 2014, it was again a whole new concept for customers to get it understood by directly paying goods without giving an OTP again and over again. They believed that using OTP will help to keep their money safe, but they were wrong, the money will be deducted from their Paytm wallet. It was the best feature that Paytm used to provide for customers, but it took time to get adjusted and used to it.
Paytm was enjoying very well in the market and the government of India used to encourage and give full support to the company in a successful manner.
Statistics data link for reference
“https://blog.paytm.com/online-commerce-in-india-key-stats-cb7d0e4473f7”
Business Strategy of Paytm
The main core focus of Paytm is to serve the client base of Indians because many of the Indian clients see the world as another chance or opportunity by simply accessing online installments. So, the company figured it out a way to hire more clients by offering Paytm Gold, Paytm Wallet, stocks, investments and not only that it used promotion strategy such as cricket and TV to acquire more and more no of clients.
Paytm is still holds various channels well enough to hire more clients and one of the major reasons was demonetization that helped the company to bring success and encounter with more clients.
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Source of earning money
Paytm Mall, also known as the “Marketplace of Paytm” – is where the pay-out is generated or calculated through fees and commissions which are used to be deducted from the actual selling price. The fees or charges include logistics, penalty charges, payment gateway, and so on.
Recharge Services
Paytm used to offer recharge services for customers in their business model where it includes Mobile plan, TV, Electricity, Gas, Metro, and data card as well which adds one more advantage to their model. Paytm charge commissions from each of these operators to earn more money out of it.
Bill Payment
Just like recharge facilities, customers have the option to make payment for telephone, water, broadband, and other bills in an instantly and easily manner on Paytm and the company also makes partnerships or agreements with various educational institutions as well as other financial institutions together as one platform to accept educational fees and buy insurance policies or pay insurance in installments.
Promotion, Advertising and campaign Strategy
Paytm used to make their promotion strategy by print media, digital, and radio services, and the main advertisement strategy focussed only to bring the essence of visibility to share their ads on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and try to capture their likes and followers. Sometimes Paytm even sponsored some posts on Snapchat and on LinkedIn to communicate more information to the public audience in large bulk. Events such as Paytm Karo that helped a lot to gain more its popularity every time transferring money to friends, families, bank and so on.
Paytm was removed from the Google play store as Paytm supported some gambling business apps.
SWOT Analysis of Paytm
Strengths
- Paytm provides cashback and discounts
- Paytm has excellent support of brand awareness
- Large scale to grow across India
- It holds a strong marketing campaign
Weaknesses
- Paytm has to robust the IT Infrastructure
- It has a lack of awareness among customers
- When some offers introduce, difficult to control traffic
- Payment error
Opportunities
- Demonetisation added benefits to Paytm
- Demand for online payment got increased
- Business and customers audience add benefits
- Exponential growth
Threats
- Competition is challenging circumstances
- Connectivity problems may arise
- Safety concerns need to be taken care of
- Privacy
Conclusion
We can say that the need and utmost requirement of Cashless economy is very much needed in upcoming times as we in future to secure the future transactions and take India towards achieving a digital economy and for that, every individual must be equally given guidance and support to make payment digitally by providing assistance and training to accomplish the goal of India.
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