Paytm has acqui-hired Shopsity, a Delhi based startup which offered online to offline solutions for retail stores, and will integrate Shopsity’s technology and offer additional solutions to its offline merchants. Paytm currently claims to have 800,000 offline sellers on its platform. Shopsity was founded by Danish Ahmed, who previously co-founded Yebhi and quit it to launch Shopsity in May last year. At launch, the company provided information on fashion products being sold in the users’ vicinity through an app. In July last year, Shopsity raised an undisclosed amount in a round of seed funding from Sandeep Aggarwal and Teruhide Sato. According to a VCCircle report, Shopsity was supposedly shut down and Danish has joined Paytm as VP of the O2O business, whereas Gaurav Arya has joined Paytm as GM of the sales marketplace. Offline driving transactions In August, Paytm’s offline merchant transactions exceeded online transactions on the platform, CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma (VSS) told MediaNama. About challenges in going offline, Sharma said, “So, it was three layers of new things: One for the consumer, it was new because they have never gone in the offline world and paid in any online payment instrument. We had to help with consumer mindset. Second is towards the merchant who are okay with cash and have no obligation to build a non-cash business. The third was that we had chosen a new technology, where the consumer and the merchant had to learn.. The point is that this is tokenization for your digital wallet.” Also…
