Paytm brings furniture & large appliances on board

Paytm, online marketplace is bringing on board marquee brands in the furniture and large appliances space as it looks to further its strategy of building a connection with offline retailers.

As per the reports of Economic Times, Noida- based company will provide an online presence to the brands on its marketplace, but fulfillment and installation will be delivered by the brand's local franchisees.

However, furniture and large appliances were new categories launched by online marketplaces in 2015, fulfilment through offline partners continues to be in a pilot stage. The inventory-based model of fulfilment provides a margin of 40 to 60 per cent, though it depends largely on companies working with specialised logistic partners.

"We do not work with inventory and the current model in the furniture category is a 10-20 per cent margin business. We currently cover 1,400-plus pin codes and will scale this to 7,000 pin codes in the coming quarter," said Sudhanshu Gupta, Vice-President, Paytm.

"For large appliances and furniture business, logistics poses the biggest challenge for online commerce platforms, both from a cost and user experience point of view. We are solving this through the brand's ecosystem," as told to Economic Times by Amit Bagaria, vice-president at Paytm.