Paytm eyes $3-4 bn GMV by fiscal-end

New Delhi: Mobile commerce firm Paytm expects to clock a gross merchandise value (GMV) run rate of USD 3-4 billion by the end of March next year on the back of strong growth in transactions on its marketplace.

The Alibaba-backed company claims to have about 40,000 merchants on board already.

"We are witnessing a strong traction on our marketplace. Our business has been scaling rapidly and we are already clocking a gross merchandise value (GMV) run rate of USD 1.5 billion," Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma told PTI.

He added that the company expects the GMV run rate to touch USD 3-4 billion by the end of the fiscal.

Revenue run rate is a term used in online retailing to indicate total sales value of merchandise sold through the marketplace over a certain period of time.

According to reports, Paytm's rivals Snapdeal and Flipkart are clocking GMV run rates of about USD 3.5 billion and USD 4.5 billion, respectively while Amazon is closing in on the USD 2 billion mark.

"We are presently doing up to two million transactions a day and have seen a 10 percent week-on-week growth in that. While we have 40,000 merchants on board, this number is expected to grow to one lakh by year-end," he said.

Sharma said in the last month itself, 10,000 merchants had received orders through Paytm and the average cart size is about Rs 1,200-1,400.

"There are 10 million products on Paytm's online marketplace and the figure is increasing by 2-3 million products every month. For us, the focus will be on non-electronic categories like apparels and accessories," he said.

He added that around 90 percent of its orders are from unstructured categories like fashion, home furnishing and accessories.