Amit Sinha, who is currently a vice-president looking after business and human resources at One97 Communications, has been appointed as the chief operating officer (COO) of its e-commerce business Paytm Mall.
At Paytm Mall, he will be responsible for overall operations, hiring, category management and logistics. Amit Sinha has been associated with Paytm since December 2007 and has served in several key business roles.
Commenting on this development, Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma said in a statement:
At Paytm Mall, we are addressing a unique opportunity of giving small businesses and retailers access to mobile internet technology to address India’s large mobile consumer base. Amit’s experience in building various businesses since their inception makes him our best choice to lead our commerce business.
Last year, Paytm de-merged its three-year old e-commerce business into a separate unit—Paytm Mall, under the legal entity Paytm E-Commerce Pvt Ltd.
Earlier this year, it launched a separate portal for the e-commerce business named Paytm Mall. During launch, the company had said that Paytm Mall will allow customers to shop from 68 million products across categories such as fashion, electronics, consumer durables and home furnishings, from about 140,000 sellers.
The company had also said that it will revamp seller app, and will be available in seven languages and enable anyone with a smartphone to set up a seller account on Paytm Mall.
Shareholders in Paytm E-Commerce include Alibaba Singapore E-commerce Pte. Ltd, Alipay Singapore Pte. Ltd, SAIF Partners and founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, among others. The combined shareholding of Alibaba and its affiliate Ant Financials is expected to be over 50 percent in Paytm E-commerce Pvt Ltd.
It spun-out e-commerce business into separate entity as the company is looking to use the experience and expertise of Alibaba in this space. It aimed to take over the e-commerce market, but Flipkart and Amazon India are still the dominant players in the market.
