Paytm is just nailing the offline market with its recent acquisition of Shopsity

At a time when the country is hankering for lower denomination currency notes amidst the chaos of currency demonetization, the tech savvy countrymen are breathing relief, all thanks to Paytm.

Now the Noida based ecommerce platform specializing in recharge and payments has just acquired Delhi-based Shopsity in a bid to strengthen its offline retail network. Shopsity follows an online-tooffline model that offers solutions to small retail stores.

While there is no update on the transaction value, Paytm is creating seller-focussed services for its offline merchants. The company is in the process of acquiring merchants to accept payments and plans to go deeper and offer a more engaged platform for interacting with customers.

Shopsity co-founders Danish Ahmed and Gaurav Arya have joined Paytm's management and are actively working to strengthen seller services for the 8,00,000-strong offline sellers on the Paytm ecosystem. The acquisition will aid Paytm's targof reaching 4 million offline merchants by March 2017, the company claims.

“We are working to bring an entire suite of digital services to them,” Ahmed told the Economic Times. Shopsity was Ahmed's second venture after he quit as CEO of Yebhi in May 2015. "By integrating Shopsity's technology with our advanced seller services, we will be able to offer additional solutions to our family of small offline merchants. I am confident this acquisition will offer further momentum to online-to-offline,” said Madhur Deora, chief financial officer at Paytm told the ET.