PhonePe, one of India’s leading digital payment platforms, has launched a new app called Pincode, which is currently available in Bangalore. The app aims to be a hyperlocal e-commerce platform, connecting MSMEs, local sellers and farmers to the entire ecosystem.
The Pincode app is first targeting the food and grocery category, with plans to expand to other categories in the near future. The app aims to help small businesses that have been hit hard by the pandemic, enabling them to reach more customers and grow their businesses.
One of the key features of the Pincode app is its focus on hyperlocal commerce. This means that the app will only display products and services that are available in the user’s immediate vicinity. This helps to ensure that users are able to get what they need quickly and easily, without having to travel long distances or wait for deliveries.
On the Pincode app, users can “multitask” and have multiple carts with separate checkouts while shopping across different categories.
While the company did not divulge the investment into or the budget set aside for the project, PhonePe executives said it is targeting over 100,000 orders per day on the new app by December.
The Pincode app is also designed to be easy to use, with a simple and intuitive interface that makes it easy for users to browse and purchase products. Users can search for products by category, brand, or keyword, and can also filter their searches based on price, location, and other factors.
Another important feature of the Pincode app is its support for small businesses. The app allows MSMEs, local sellers and farmers to create their own stores, where they can sell their products directly to customers. This helps to cut out the middleman and enable small businesses to keep more of the profits from their sales.
The Pincode app also supports a range of payment options, including digital wallets, UPI, credit and debit cards, and cash on delivery. This helps to ensure that users can pay for their purchases in the way that is most convenient for them.
“We would not be touching the prices. All the sellers will be listed democratically, and they would come via seller platforms. We are not here to decide who the winner is, and just want people to have way more choices,” CEO Sameer Nigam said.
It’s worth mentioning that the Pincode app from PhonePe is also integrated with the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), an open protocol for e-commerce transactions that enables buyers, sellers, and logistics operators to connect seamlessly. The integration with ONDC will allow MSMEs, local sellers, and farmers to access a wider customer base, including those outside of the Pincode app’s user base.
“ONDC is the next big thing. We are going to democratise ecommerce and not have it restricted to a few players,” former Infosys Chairman Nandan Nilekani, one of the key architects behind ONDC, said at the launch event.
With 440 million registered users and as many as 35 million offline merchants on PhonePe, the integration with ONDC fuels the Walmart-owned company’s ambitious plan to enter the online commerce segment, especially since its separation from ecommerce giant Flipkart in December.
