April 5 ( Punjab Khabarnama) : Pai Platforms, backed by Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, launched a shopping app on the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), it was reported. Paytm does not own any shares in Pai Platforms but ‘PaiPai’ app has been developed by the company’s parent entity One97 Communications, Moneycontrol reported.
The report comes two months after Paytm E-commerce Private Limited rebranded itself as Pai Platforms and acquired Bitsila, a seller-side platform on ONDC. In April last year, PhonePe launched a new app for shopping on ONDC called Pincode.
Government-backed ONDC has become an important focus area for Paytm where it sees its next big opportunity, the report claimed as Paytm’s Vijay Shekhar Sharma said earlier, “Commerce is a natural extension for us. We are committing to sign up at least 10 million merchants on ONDC before 2025 ends.” He also said that 11.8 million users had already shopped on ONDC through Paytm adding, “This means that ONDC has already become a significant player in e-commerce. There are around 50 million e-commerce users in India and over a fifth are already on ONDC.”
The Paytm founder also said then that ONDC will open up e-commerce opportunity for a lot of players.