Ending the speculations and eyeing a comeback, Alibaba-backed e-commerce firm Paytm Mall said that it has hired 200 people across various functions and is further planning to hire another 300 for its back-end tech team in the coming months.

The company is targeting to register business of Rs.10,000 crore over the next 12 months. Owned by One97 Communications, Paytm Mall is fast emerging online-to-offline (O2O) platform across the country and has witnessed over 200% growth for its O2O business in the last six months. 

“We are observing strong traction for O2O with the business growing over 200 per cent in the last six months and have therefore doubled down on this business model. To support this growth, we have re-aligned some of our teams and have added 200 more people for the business. We further plan to add an additional workforce of 300 people across business, technology, and product in the next few months.”- Srinivas Mothey, SVP, Paytm Mall

The news comes amid reports that the company was planning to scale down its online marketplace business and eventually exit it. The company, however, has been through some internal reshuffle as well as changes so that it can revamp and reboot.

Paytm has also partnered with large format retail stores, including Croma, Reliance Digital and Big Bazaar; Brand-exclusive stores such as Samsung, Asus, Dell, and Lenovo to ensure a strong offline presence in all major tier-II and tier-III cities.