Launching paid subscriptions have been quite a fad amongst consumer-facing Internet companies in India. Right from Zomato to Myntra, Swiggy, Flipkart and BookMyShow all have crafted some sort of premium membership to hook users and retain them for a longer time.
Joining the league of the aforementioned firms, Paytm has introduced Paytm First – a loyalty programme which covers paid subscriptions of several companies including Zomato, Eros Now, Sony Liv, Viu Premium, and Uber.
Instead of limiting its subscription only to Paytm, the firm is bundling paid memberships offered by several companies into one. It’s akin to play super app approach for many subscriptions.
The move that aims to improve retention rate and increase time spent inside the Paytm ecosystem can find many takers if it adds more partners like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hotstar, and others.
Many existing users who have multiple subscriptions find it cumbersome to manage them. Recently, there have been talks about the need for one subscription that encompasses several offerings into one.
It’s not clear at the moment whether Paytm First will also be bundling subscription of global and local media publications or not.
Priced at Rs 750 Paytm First claims to dish out benefits worth Rs 12,000. The subscription also includes cashbacks, priority shipping, and customer service at its e-commerce platform Paytm mall. The company wants to accumulate 3 million subscribers in the first year of operations.
When it comes to executing a Super App model in India, Tapzo was the first to evangelise. However, it failed to captivate users and was eventually sold out to Amazon Pay in a distress sale. To some extent, Flipkart-owned PhonePe made some headway in mirroring Tencent’s super app offering.
Currently, it has over 25 partners including OYO, Gaana, Ola, Faasos, Grofers, and Curefit amongst several others.
Given that no one has attempted to aggregate several subscriptions and bundled into one at an attractive price point, Paytm First would definitely gain some early traction. But in a long run, its adoption would largely be dependent on kind of partners it aboard.
The development was reported by ET.
