Paytm: Raises $ 660M from Global investors for future projects
Leading Indian Fintech brand PayTm is again in the limelight these days. This time it is in the news for the future plans and finance received from known global investors. It has raised $660m from top Alipay ( an investment vertical From Alibaba), SVF panther, and T Rowe Price. Among these, SVF panther is an entity of Softbank, which is registered at Cayman Island while T Rowe Price is based in the US. T Rowe Price and Softbank have invested in this company before also. This news has been confirmed by Tofler, which is a business intelligence news agency based at Gurugram.
As per the Reuters, citing the report from Tofler, as a part of this deal, the One97 Communication will allocate 2.6 million shares to these investors. It is to be noted that One97 Communication is the parent company of Paytm. For this Fintech company, it is another raise of the fund in less than a month as before almost a month only, it has got $1 billion from D1 capital, Ant financial, Discovery Capital and Softbank as well as T Rowe Price.
In a recent interview with Times of India, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder and CEO of the company had disclosed that new funds would be used to expand the business in offline and online merchant expansion as well as insurance, modern era banking and lending. As per the company, it aims to expand its horizon and reach the rural market in the next three years for which it has set US$ 1.4 million aside.
In the month of November, only the company had revealed its plans for investing in AI-based companies with various data for the India-specific solutions. For this, it has a plan to invest US$70 million. The company is also ready to invest in startups that have the potentials to generate considerable employment and India-specific solutions. Here it is notable that the company One97 communication has recently reported a loss of US$ 550billionon recent March 31. In the past year, it was US$ 207 million, and hence there is an increase of 165% in the loss for the company this year. Though the loss is widening, the company has a plan for further growth. As per the CEO Sharma, the company is looking at more probabilities and will come up with IPO once it starts earning cash. The IPO may come in the year 2021.