If movie tickets, flight tickets and railway tickets aren’t enough, Paytm is looking to woo customers with something a lot more tempting – gold.
Paytm is selling digital gold on its platform on the occasion of Dhanteras. Users can choose to buy their desired weight in gold online, and it’s added immediately to their wallets. The prices change dynamically based on global gold market rates.
The gold stays in a digital form until users try want to convert it to digital coins. Users can get their digital gold redeemed in the form of coins and it is delivered within 24 hours.
And since it’s Paytm, there’s the added incentive of a cashback along with the deal.
Now Paytm isn’t the first service to sell gold online – several independent jewelers and banks already let Indians buy gold online. But Paytm’s gold offer seems a part of a broader strategy to bring all transactions under the Paytm umbrella. By selling everything from shampoo to cars, and booking everything from movies to hotels, and recharging all your devices, Paytm clearly wants to be your one stop shop for all transactions that can be done online.
Other companies are moving in this direction as well – Snapdeal too has integrated with Zomato, ClearTrip and redBus to offer food delivery and tickets; Flipkart now has its own digital wallet. Then there are apps like HelpChat that aggregate several functions including shopping and cab booking. There’s a race on to provide as much functionality on one app as possible – Indian users typically have low-end phones that don’t allow a lot of apps to simultaneously coexist on a phone , and superapps have proven to be very successful in China.
The future could very likely see e-commerce companies converge in their product offerings by having as broad a buffet of services as possible. And that makes these first few moves all the more crucial – the more users companies can acquire during these early few years, the deeper their defensive moats will be when other apps catch up. There’s a stampede on for the acquisition of Indian users – and Paytm seems to be taking the lead in this gold rush.