We have all heard stories about entrepreneurs leaving their homes in tier 2 or 3 cities to start their businesses in a metropolitan city like Mumbai, New Delhi, or Bengaluru.
A few reasons why founders prefer a metro city over a smaller city are:
- Strong digital infrastructure
- Availability of talent
- Build and leverage connections with peers
- Better opportunities
- Higher purchasing power
Over the years, as India has gone through a rapid digital transformation, tier 2 and 3 cities have quickly caught up to the opportunities and infrastructure that metro cities offer.
Irrespective of whether your business is online or a brick-and-mortar shop, the potential of its growth in tier 2 and 3 cities is the same as any tier 1 city would provide.
How India’s Tier 2 and 3 Cities are Growing
If you are still on the fence and wondering whether you should start your business or expand an existing one in smaller cities, the following arguments might help you decide.
In March 2022, the Government of India told Rajya Sabha that, “There is at least one recognised startup from every State and UT and nearly 50% of the recognised startups are from Tier-II and III cities. Recognised startups are spread across over 640 districts and have reported the creation of more than seven lakh jobs with an average of 11 jobs created by a recognised startup.”
Right from the booming real-estate market, ease of connectivity through improved transport system, and increase in venture capital investments, to digital adoption of online shopping and payments – tier 2 and 3 cities have clearly shown signs that it is ripe with opportunities for businesses.
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With esteemed colleges and universities such as IITs and IIMs opening up in lower-tier cities like Patna, Indore, Guwahati, as well, there is enough local talent available for startups. The growing acceptance of the work-from-home trend has also ensured that a large number of employees from all fields of work have moved to their hometowns in smaller cities.
If you want to start your online or offline business in tier 2 and 3 cities, you can now do that without any worry. These cities have started seeing thriving communities of entrepreneurs and angel investors who want to back local businesses. Additionally, customers’ purchasing power has also increased over the years.
Grow Your Business with Paytm for Business
Launching your new business or expanding an existing one to tier 2 or 3 cities need not be done alone. You can rely on Paytm for Business and choose the tools from a wide variety of products to run your business.
Here are a few tools that you should consider while growing your business in a tier 2 city:
- Paytm Postpaid
One way to have a strong footing in tier 2 and 3 cities is by fixing customers’ liquidity issues while purchasing a high-ticket product. Very often customers fall short of money at the end of the month. Due to this, they postpone their purchase, and if it’s not something very important, they forget to buy it later.
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This is where Paytm’s buy now, pay later offering – Paytm Postpaid comes into the picture. If merchants’ offer Paytm Postpaid on their checkout page, customers can simply use it to buy the product even if they are short of funds. Paytm Postpaid allows customers to pay for their purchase in equal instalments or in one go the next month of the purchase.
- Paytm Wallet
Customers in tier 2 and 3 cities are more likely to go ahead with their purchase if they can pay through a payment option that is familiar to them and the one they trust. It’s better if merchants let customers pay via Paytm Wallet, one of the most popular digital wallets in the country. Millions of consumers use Paytm Wallet for their day-to-day transactions.
Merchants can simply accept money in their Paytm Wallet or bank account without any delay. With industry-high success rates, neither merchants nor customers have to worry about payments failure.
- Paytm Smart Devices
As digital payments proliferate in lower-tier cities, customers expect to have all the payment modes available at their disposal. Since offline retails is still huge in tier 2 and 3 cities, merchants must offer smart payments devices that enable customers to pay through digital means.
Paytm for Business offers an array of smart devices such as QR codes, Paytm Soundbox, and Paytm All-in-One POS machines.
With the help of QR codes, merchants can offer all payment options including non-Paytm UPI apps, Paytm Postpaid, Paytm Wallet, and RuPay cards.
Paytm Soundbox is one of the most innovative products to come out of the digital payments industry. Paytm Soundbox will help offline retail businesses to track each and every transaction in real-time. The device comes with a loud speaker, which announces payment details every time someone makes a payment.
While there are many POS devices in the market, Paytm All-in-one POS stands out among them all in terms of features and ease of usage. It comes loaded with all the billing and payment needs your business will have.
This lightweight Paytm All-in-one POS machine is capable of processing payments from debit, credit, and prepaid cards. It is also adept at processing transactions via Paytm Wallet, Paytm Postpaid, and QR codes.
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We have partnered with over 20 banks and dozens of brands, which will help you offer special pricing or payment options to your customers. This is specifically useful if your customers want to buy a high-ticket product and are looking for bank offers such as easy instalment payments.
- Paytm Ads
If you are launching a business in a new city, getting the word out about your products, services, and features is as important as anything else. Advertisements in newspapers, television, or hoardings, can be expensive and might not give you as much reach.
Plus, placing advertisements in traditional media is not very well targeted specifically to your customers and is usually generic. Because of this, the conversion rate of customers actually purchasing from your store or website after seeing the advertisement is going to be very low.
For a high conversion rate, you should go for digital ads. This is where Paytm Ads comes into the picture as it gives your brand the reach no one else can.
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Your brand will be visible to over 300 million Paytm users who use the app for daily transactions. Paytm has more than 150 million monthly active users.
With Paytm Ads, you can select your target audience based on their age, location, gender, the language they speak, etc. With such focused and targeted advertising, your business will get quality leads – customers who would actually purchase from your website or store.
Conclusion
With the help of Paytm for Business, online and offline businesses can leverage the aspirations of customers from tier 2 and 3 cities. Internet and globalisation has empowered customers from smaller cities to live a lavish lifestyle and subscribe to services that ease their day-to-day life.
The narrative that lower-tier cities like Aurangabad, Surat, Jodhpur, etc are difficult to scale your business, needs to change. These cities have now become a huge source of talent, have started seeing a rise in online shopping, and prefer digital payments over cash.
Frequently Asked Questions
Question 1: What are the services that Paytm for Business offers?
Answer: Paytm for Business is a versatile digital payment company that offers merchants with a suite of payment tools meant for both online and offline payments.
As an online merchant, you should absolutely use tools like Paytm Payment Gateway, Paytm Payment Links, Paytm Subscriptions, and Paytm PostPaid to ensure your customers have a wonderful payment experience. Apart from these tools, features such as tokenisation, Paytm Analytics, and Paytm Super Router are also quite useful for online sellers.
If you own a physical store, you will find payment tools such as Paytm SoundBox, Paytm POS Device, Paytm QR Code, and Paytm PostPaid extremely useful. These will enable a seamless payment experience for you as well as your customers.
Question 2: What is the use case of Paytm Super Router?
Answer: If you are using more than one payment gateways to accept payments, Paytm Super Router should be your go-to tool to manage them all. Paytm Super Router detects if a particular payment gateway is experiencing downtime and intuitively routes payment to another gateway. You can set different parameters based on your preferences of which payment gateway you prefer for a particular payment method.
A few benefits of using Paytm Super Router include increase in success rate, reducing costs, and automatically manage different payment gateways.
