Love Shopping Luxury Brands? Paytm Might Be Your One-Stop Destination After Snapdeal, Will Paytm Open Doors For Online Luxury Market In India?
By Ritu Kochar
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After some of the big names in the startup world, like Snapdeal, Darveys and RocknShop introduced online luxury shopping to Indians last year; it seems that Paytm will soon be following their lead and launch its own mobile luxury platform by the name "Anasa'.
According to a report in The Economic Times, "Paytm could soon be foraying into the luxury space by launching an online and mobile ecommerce platform exclusively for luxury products", as told by some people familiar with the developments.
The E-Commerce company backed by Alibaba for digital payments currently sells products under categories like mobiles and accessories, electronics, men's fashion, women's fashion, baby kids and toys, home and kitchen on its website. Anasa, being labeled as the "first of its kind luxury mall on mobile' will offer products from luxury brands like Gucci, Burberry, Fendi, and Furla. Other well known brands will be added soon. It will supposedly be ""the right environment and market positioning to showcase luxury brands" to high net worth individuals or HNIs.
Although, such reports were denied by the spokesperson of Paytm stating that "the company is not planning to enter the luxury space right now', the time for such a step seems right. India is still new to the luxury market and as the report in ET suggests, the market will only grow in the future. With an expected growth of 19 per cent according to Euromonitor International, the luxury market in India is likely to double from Rs 163 million in 2015 to Rs 390 million by 2020. Given this, an online mall that caters to every need of the consumer appears like a good idea to proceed with.
From validating authenticity to the high range transactions, when you come to think of it the problems with luxury brand shopping are numerous. However, I believe that the case was very similar when online shopping was introduced in India. People were ambiguous about the services that these e-commerce companies provide. Time proved them to be a deliverer (no pun indeed) of services they promised and they managed to gain trust of Indian buyers. Paytm itself has 100 million users and targets to reach 500 million by 2020. This rate of growth indicates that Indian buyers are ready for the developments in online shopping.
