Mahindra forays Into e-commerce with launch of M2ALL marketplace

The Mahindra group announced its debut into the e-commerce space with the launch of M2ALL.com, an e-marketplace for Mahindra products and services. The online marketplace has begun taking bookings for the new compact SUV-Mahindra TUV300. "The new digital platform will offer customers an enhanced buying experience that combines speed and convenience of e-commerce transactions with the trust and reliability associated with the Mahindra group", said VS Parthasarathy, Chief Financial Officer of the Mahindra group.

While Parthasarathy did not reveal the capital that has gone into the venture, he said the operations began with "frugal investments", and will incrementally go up as the business scales up. M2ALL will enable all the Mahindra businesses to sell products at the marketplace, and going forward, also offer other manufacturers and sellers of complementary products a platform, he added.

Currently, five of Mahindra Group's 31 brands will have virtual stores at the marketplace, and all the brands will be available within the next two years, "as and when their technical back-end is sound", Vijay Mahajan, head of E Market Place, Corporate IT, said. E Market Place is a 100 per cent subsidiary set up by Mahindra in June this year to look after the e-commerce business, Parthasarathy said. "We want to bring the brick and click together. E-commerce is not being seen as a separate channel, but as one of the other channels along with dealers and distributors, to work as a complementary network," he added.

He further said E Market Place has 10 employees and is in the process of expanding its team. M2ALL also offers the group companies and external sellers e-commerce technology, including online catalogue management services, integration with payment gateways, back-end integration, and support services such as digital marketing, data analytics, logistics and call centre services, the company said.

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