● GROWTH IN GLOBAL OPPORTUNITIES IN SME SECTOR THROUGH EFFICIENT CROSS BORDER PAYMENTS, NCREASED ADOPTION OF DIGITAL ECONOMY LED TO GROWTH IN FREELANCING OPPORTUNITIES, ●PUNJAB SHOWING FASTER RECOVERY IN CROSS BORDER SMB TRANSACTIONS THAN NATIONAL AVERAGE 

Rohit Kulkarni,

Payoneer, a leading cross border digital payment platform for SMEs, empowers businesses to grow globally. Over 4 Lac businesses and individual freelancers India are registered with Payoneer and use its services to receive payments from international clients. Payoneer also helps these businesses gain market access with selling on more marketplaces and giving them the ability to bill in over 200+ markets.

Ecommerce Sellers, Freelancers and the likes of IT services providers using Payoneer grew their business multifold in the past 4 years. Some SMB trends of 2020 are as below. 

Ranked as the 2nd fastest growing freelance market in the world, India’s freelance economy currently has over 15 million+ freelancers. With entrepreneurship on the rise and rapid changes in employment methods, Work from Home and remote work have seen unprecedented surge in demand for Gig workers. We have seen incremental adoption of freelancing as a long-term career and virtual mode of working has gained greater prominence, especially during and post the lockdown.

“With virtual workspaces gaining more prominence during the pandemic the gig economy has seen an exponential increase. Rohit Kulkarni, Vice President, Payoneer said, “Now, Indian talents in fields like Search Engine Marketing, Content writing, product designing or IT development are not bound by geographical limitations which has resulted in newer opportunities for this segment”.

Highlighting cross border eCommerce as one of the biggest opportunities seen by Indian sellers Rohit Kulkarni, Vice President, Payoneer said, “The ecommerce industry took a big blow due to supply lines being severed at the start of the pandemic. While sellers were not able to send shipments regularly from March 2020 to July 2020, we did see sellers recover sales from July onwards.

Indian freelancing segment saw a 19% growth in income in Q3 2020. Freelancers from Punjab have been at the forefront and have beaten the national growth rates. Freelancer volumes from Punjab surpassed 27% in this period. IT services clusters in Mohali saw the fastest jump in IT outsourcing volumes in Punjab.

Efficient payments have led to simplification in cross border freelancing. Shanky Gupta, Founder of Softuvo- a leading Mohali based tech solutions provider in web, software, and mobile app development for various industries, highlights the importance of simplified payments in their cross border services business "Payoneer has been a reliable online transaction provider partner. Dealing with international clients is much easier and has simplified all our client’s transactions across the globe,” 

In 2020, India was amongst the top 10 growth markets for cross border eCommerce. Post lockdown, a lot of businesses adopted cross border eCommerce channels. Clusters like Mohali, Amritsar and Chandigarh saw the highest volume in Punjab clusters for cross-border eCommerce volumes.

Punjab saw an impressive jump of over 40% in Q3 as compared to Q2 in cross border eCommerce, leading much above the national average growth of around 20% in Q3. Amritsar experienced the fastest recovery of Cross border eCommerce. Interestingly, Mohali, Amritsar and Chandigarh were recorded as the top three Cross Border eCommerce clusters in Punjab. With a significant 41% growth in cross border eCommerce volume in Punjab, there has also been a 10% increase in cross border eCommerce sellers in the state (Q3 v/s Q2).

Highlighting cross border eCommerce as one of the biggest opportunities seen by Indian sellers Rohit Kulkarni, Vice President, Payoneer said, “The ecommerce industry took a big blow due to supply lines being severed at the start of the pandemic. While sellers were not able to send shipments regularly from March 2020 to July 2020, we did see sellers recover sales from July onwards.

The good thing is that they have now seen a steady rise back to normal during the peak season of October 2020 to December 2020. During this time Payoneer worked with ecosystem partners like Logistic, warehousing and other ecommerce service providers to prioritize Payoneer sellers, help them with domain expertise and increase capacity so that they could serve their consumers better. Payoneer created customized programs like SellerExpress for merchants from Punjab to educate them of the benefits of cross border eCommerce.”