Top Alibaba execs join board of Paytm Mall

BENGALURU: In a significant development, senior Alibaba group executives including the online behemoth's vice-chairman Joseph Tsai, J Michael Evans, director and president, and Daniel Zhang, director and CEO, have joined the board of Paytm Mall, according to filings made with the Registrar of Companies.

These top executives are also on the board of Alibaba group indicating the importance being ascribed to India by the Chinese internet giant.

The appointments come on the back of Paytm Mall receiving a $200-million funding led by Alibaba along with participation from venture fund SAIF Partners, an early investor in Paytm's parent One97 Communications. The parent company had to separate its commerce and payments businesses in order to get a nod from the RBI for launching its payments bank.

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After having held talks with multiple players in India, including Flipkart, Alibaba is going ahead with Paytm Mall to push its e-commerce plans here. Paytm Mall in the long term may be able to offer additional ammunition to SoftBank in the e-commerce war here due to the close links between Alibaba and SoftBank.

Paytm Mall said it is aiming to hit a $4-billion run rate on an annualised basis. Paytm Mall's COO Amit Sinha said a series of corrective actions like delisting sellers and removing logistics partners to clean its platform had already been implemented. The company has onboarded 1,000 brands as it prepares for the festive season battle with bigger rivals like Amazon and Flipkart.