Paytm: $1 Billion In Funding And $16 Billion Valuation

By Amit Chowdhry ● Nov 25, 2019
  • Paytm announced it raised $1 billion in a Series G round of funding led by T. Rowe Price at a $16 billion valuation

Today Paytm announced it raised $1 billion in a Series G round of funding led by T. Rowe Price, according to TechCrunch. And existing investors Ant Financials put in $400 million and the SoftBank Vision Fund put in $200 million. Plus Discovery Capital also joined the round.

With this round of funding, Paytm is now valued at $16 billion. Including this funding round, Paytm’s parent company One97 Communications has raised over $3.3 billion.

What does Paytm do? Paytm works as a mobile wallet where users can transfer money similar to how Apple Pay works.

The funding will be used for signing up more merchants as the company is looking to expand with more small and medium-sized businesses. Currently, Paytm has 15 million merchants on its platform. Plus the funding will also be used for expanding its financial products like lending and insurance.

Credit Suisse estimates that the digital payments market in India is estimated to hit $1 trillion in the next four years. This is a substantial jump from the current $200 billion digital payment market size.

Paytm used to be the dominant player in mobile payments, but the company has been losing market share due to a number of major players that have entered the market, including Google Pay and PhonePe — which is owned by Walmart through its acquisition of Flipkart.

Now Google Pay has over 67 million monthly active users in India. And Flipkart’s PhonePe has been estimated to be valued at over $14 billion as a standalone operation.

Paytm’s growth has not been cheap for the company as its expenses have been racking up. For example, Paytm saw a loss of $549 million in the financial year ended in March — which is up from $206 million the year before.

Paytm’s growth has not been cheap for the company as its expenses have been racking up. For example, Paytm saw a loss of $549 million in the financial year ended in March — which is up from $206 million the year before.

Another major player that is expected to enter the mobile payments market soon is WhatsApp. In the next few weeks, WhatsApp Pay will be available to all 400 million of its users in India.