MMTC eyes Rs five billion turnover from e-commerce operations

MMTC Ltd, the state-owned trading entity, aims to launch a full-fledged portal for its e-commerce transactions by September this year.

The online transactions are meant for sale of Indian gold coins and jewellery, domains where the trading giant has proven edge.

"In the current fiscal, we are targeting Rs five billion turnover from our e-commerce transactions. To start with, Indian Gold coins and jewellery will be traded. Later, agricultural and other commodities will follow. We have already opened the technical bids. Shortly, we will be opening the technical bids for selection of the software service provider for developing the portal”, said an MMTC official.

MMTC has decided to go for revamp of its e-commerce operations. The idea is to expand the retail footprint for gold and silver. MMTC wants to reach out to a wider customer base through a dedicated portal for bullion transactions. Though the company has a site for e-procurement, it needs to be substantially upgraded.

MMTC has already invited e-bids for deployment of COTS (Commercial Off the Shelf) software for its planned e-commerce portal. The selected bidder would be responsible for retail operations, customisation and deployment of COTS software on cloud with maintenance for five years.

The bidder to be eligible should be a company registered in India under the Companies Act, with registered office and operations in the country. The minimum turnover of the bidder should not be less than Rs one crore for each of the last three financial years in the field of e-commerce platform development and maintenance. Also, its net worth needs to be positive for each of the last three fiscal years.

The scope of work includes deployment of COTS software including its integration with payment gateway and mobile application.

MMTC envisages the completion of implementation of the project within 16 weeks from the start date.

On the e-commerce site, MMTC's customers would be able to search for products by using different keywords like name and category. The site would also offer the customers the advanced search option. 

The site envisages a temporary shopping cart for guests and permanent shopping cart for the customers. The customers would be able to view the shipping prices for their purchased products on the website. That apart, customers would be able to make payments for the purchased products on the website by using integrated payment gateway given by the client. The website would be integrated with various social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

In addition to its own outlets in the country, MMTC has earlier tied up with Indian Overseas Bank, Vijaya Bank, Fedaral Bank and Yes Bank to sell gold coins in five grams and 10 grams denominations as well as 20 gram bar. The company has also announced a transparent buyback of gold coins made of recycled gold.

MMTC is one the premier bullion traders in the country with the precious metals division contributing significantly to its turnover. During 2016-17, the precious metals group contributed nearly 50 per cent to MMTC's gross turnover of Rs 115.93 billion despite high volatility in bullion prices. In FY19, MMTC is looking to clock a turnover of Rs 170 billion.