Paytm is pulling all stops to create awareness adoption of e-wallet in the country. After it partnered with Chinese payments company Alipay to increase adoption of digital wallets by small store owners in India and China, it is now planning to pump a mammoth Rs. 600 crores on marketing initiatives for the launch of its payment banking unit.
The banking unit is expected to be launched later this year.
Shankar Nath, senior vice-president, Paytm has said in a statement, “We are looking at increased saliency around our money transfer, which includes, person-to-person payments at kirana stores and petrol pumps bill payments and movie ticketing businesses. We expect a minimum 40 per cent jump across all these categories.”
Paytm has been issued an in-principle license by the Reserve Bank of India last August, to launch payment banking operations in the country, and will utilise the money across media platforms, including, television, digital print, radio and out-of-home advertising.
Out of the total Rs. 600 Crore set aside for spending on marketing in the fiscal year 2016-17, Rs 50 Crore is for television commercials, which are already on air now. Backed by Chinese e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group, and its affiliate Ant Financial, Paytm has already been on an advertising spree over the last 12 months.
According to Nath, a comparable amount of Rs 500 crore was spent in the last fiscal year as well. “We launched our iconic PaytmKaro campaign with the IPL last year, and followed it up with a plethora of tactical business support campaigns which were very well received — electricity bill payments, metro, bus ticketing & offline payments vertical, to name a few,”
Paytm has struck a title sponsorship deal with Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) last July, which controls Indian cricket, to sponsor domestic and international matches in the country for a period of four years, for over Rs 200 crore.
