Alibaba Backing Paytm to Partner and Expand Reach in Indian Market to become another eCommerce giant

Alibaba a Chinese B2B e-commerce giant is on the roll in the recent times. The firm has been in the news for its mergers and acquisitions. It had acquired the Chinese video streaming site Youku. Currently, the firm is again in the news for having backed the payments start-up Paytm. The firm is planning to partner with Paytm, so that it can expand its reach in the Indian markets. Alibaba is planning to invest $50 Bn towards three year expansion of the firm in India.

Paytm, ecommerce payments, has plans towards expansion. It started out as a payment app, which was initially into cashless recharges. Slowly, it went on to include other categories also in the cashless network. Currently, Paytm operates similar to a online marketplace that allows various merchants to sell and buy from it. It offers cashless facility, making online commerce easy, and convenient.

With the $50 Bn investment that is being offered to the start-up, they are planning to build a  fully fledged financial services group, which will offer all types of financial services. They are all set to acquire the necessary license from RBI. Paytm has taken small steps since its inception, in order to build trust, and offer capable services.

For any ecommerce app development, it is always good to choose a niche, and build their brand in it. This would prepare them for a fully fledged product/service under ecommerce development.

Here’s how you should proceed with your own similar e-commerce development at the start-up stage.

Starting Out with E-commerce Start-up

When you are creating an e-commerce site, you will need consider the following points

• Search for a Niche: Here, you need to search for a niche that is profitable. You need to figure out what you want to sell on your ecommerce start-up. Ideally, you should sell something that you know well enough. Look at categories that have gaps, and think of products that you can offer in that category. For this, you need to search social media and other platforms, where people have written reviews on products and categories. Your e-commerce store should offer a solution in that niche using the products you are planning to sell
   
• Opportunities in the Market: Check for the available opportunities in the product segment you have searched for. You can search for relevant keywords and use Google for this purpose. Once, you know the opportunities, you need to think on the target audience. You should also think on how your idea will sell. Look at the market before you get started with your ecommerce website
• Logistics: This is one of the preliminary considerations that you need to take into account, before getting started with your own ecommerce website. How are you planning to ship your products, and ensure the on-time delivery? This is where niche product selling will help you. You can build foundation for logistics using a single product niche, and then move on to getting in more products to the store. With one product, you will understand all that you need to know about logistics, and eventually you can use the same method for other products
   
• Payment Integration: Without proper payment integration, you won’t be able to sell your products. What is the mode of payment you are allowing? You need to be able to build secure gateways for ecommerce payments. You also need to go for payment flow development
   
• Marketing: Once, your site is ready, you need to build your brand. It is always easy to build your brand for a niche product instead of moving to all segments and categories. You also need to decide the strategic/intelligent revenue development models

Why go Niche?

When you build an e-commerce store, you should always choose a single product to sell. Amazon is an excellent example of niche selling. Amazon started out with books, as the selling category. It established a name in this category, and built its brand around books. Eventually, it took off to other categories, and today sells everything that you need to buy online.

If you want to develop similar business model, you need to understand that Amazon built a relationship with its customers. It worked on building trust online, which is important. Once, Amazon became a customer-centric brand online, it started delivering products in other categories as well. To build trust, Amazon continuously worked on logistics and secure payments, which eventually led to customer satisfaction. It also worked on its site, offering good interface leading to amazing experience.

When working with a single niche, you know what the experience needs to be, and can build your brand around that experience. It becomes difficult when you are working with different products. Managing the inventory and other ecommerce tasks also become easy with a single product.

Ideally, you should start with a niche, before entering different categories. Paytm has also adopted this progressive route, which has led to its popularity in the defined segment.