Bank of Baroda to foray into e-commerce business

Bank of Baroda plans to launch an online marketplace to its customers offering banking services and farm-related products.

The state-owned lender has invited bids seeking a partner to supply 'digital commerce platform' to provide assistance to merchants on catalog management, purchase management fulfilment, pricing, promotion and other similar services.

Bank of Baroda said it is keen to strategise and enhance online digital capabilities with a focus on creating a marketplace to fulfil services relating to different segments of customers' daily needs and lifestyle needs.

"The bank is seeking a partner to supply digital commerce platform and provide support for its implementation for multiple use cases as decided by the bank," the bank said in a request for proposal.

The bank said it will offer various kinds of banking services and farm-related products on its e-commerce platform.

The online platform partner will be required to provide assistance to merchants on catalog management, purchase management fulfilment, pricing, promotion and other similar services.

It will also be tasked to use analytics as a tool to find out the customer demands, behaviour, cross-selling and sub-selling of products, digital security management, advisory management, publicity management and location-based offers.

In the farming category, the bank proposes to offer products such as agri crop loan, farm machinery, equipment seeds and fertilisers. It will also provide loan against gold, all kinds of insurance products, investment products such as government gold bonds, among others services.

The last date for submission of expression of interest is July 26, 2019.