Paytm wants to expand. And it isn’t gonna do that the usual way, it instead wants to power up that expansion swiftly and aggressively. While we did get an example of the aggressive drive a few days back, when Paytm got into movie ticket booking, a fresh example of that same aggressive pace was spotted by folks at OfficeChai — domestic flight bookings via Paytm.
According to a fresh update issued by the company on its app, there is a sudden notification pop-up which comes up from the top, and it looks like this :
Image : OfficeChai.com
Yup. Paytm ultimately wants to be the only digital payments thingy you could ever think of using. It started with a mere recharging platform, exponentially grew on to become India’s biggest (and a by a large margin) digital payments platform, got a few bucks (thats in $Zillions) from Alibaba and continued with the digital payments march to become the first new-age tech company to receive an RBI license to operate digital wallet.
And now, Paytm is using that same exponential success to venture out into every possible digital payments related vertical one could possibly imagine — E-Commerce, gold loans (yup, thats there), school fee payments (parents!, you didn’t know that, did you?), entertainment business, metro ticket booking — and now — domestic flight booking.
However, the path to establishing dominance and decimating other players in each of these domains is going to be a really, seriously tough one. The entertainment business for example has market dominators like BookMyShow — who virtually has a monopoly over this market. As for the domestic flight booking, you have the likes of Nasdaq-listed Makemytrip, ibibo and other smaller yet fierce players like Cleartrip, via.com among others.
And looking at how things have historically turned out for Paytm in unknown verticals, the road to success in these other domains becomes all the more tough. E-commerce, where the company launched a full-fledge business, continues to trail behind the likes of Flipkart, Snapdeal and Amazon India. And while the former two are themselves facing turbulent times, the latter — coupled with the likes of rising stars like Infibeam (all set for an Indian public debut) have made it really tough for paytm to crack this domain.
This domestic flight venture too — like all the others Paytm has so hurriedly ventured into — will be interesting to see. The biggest weapon in Paytm’s armoury though — could easily be called their Brahmastra — will be its vastly used digital wallet.
One digital wallet for all your digital payments, bookings and all sorts of online buying needs — thats how Paytm might sell it to you. Watch out, and Stay tuned.
