PhonePe Enters Hyperlocal E-Commerce Market With PinCode: Could Paytm See A Step-Up In Competition?

PhonePe announced the launch of a new consumer-facing application called Pincode, which the fintech giant integrated into India’s Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) framework.

What Happened? The move aims to strengthen the company’s position in the e-commerce sector, following the complete ownership separation of the payments startup with Flipkart.

Pincode is launching in six major categories, including grocery, food, pharma, electronics, home decor, and fashion. Customers can search for stores by browsing categories and can have multiple carts at the same time with one active cart per store.

The new buyer app is available for download on both Google Play and the App Store and will focus on hyperlocal commerce.

See also: Anand Mahindra’s Conviction In India’s ‘World-Beating’ Retail Revolution Grows

PhonePe raised $650 million (₹5,338.91 crore) from several global investors and is currently raising $1 billion (₹8,213.91 crore) at a $12 billion (₹98,567.02 crore) valuation.

Several global investors have invested $650 million (₹5,338.91 crore) in PhonePe so far. PhonePe raised about $350 million (₹2,874.72 crore) from General Atlantic, Ribbit Capital, Tiger Global, and TVS Capital Funds in January as part of the first tranche of its $1 billion (₹8,213.82 crore) fundraising.

The ONDC integration will put PhonePe in direct competition with Paytm, which already has an ONDC platform integrated into its application. Currently, PhonePe operates in the e-commerce space with Switch and has services that are similar to its biggest rival, Paytm.

Read next: Modi Government Launched ONDC As Amazon Alternative — Now The US Giant Is Joining It!