Founded by Vijay Shekhar Sharma in 2000, Paytm is a digital payments and financial technology company. It is a payment gateway facilitating online payments of a variety of goods and services including online shopping, mobile recharge, utility bill payments etc. The platform additionally offers financial services like loans, insurance, and wealth management. It also offers features to pay bills, recharges, book movies and travel tickets etc.
Today, more than 20 million merchants & businesses are powered by the Noida-based company to accept payments digitally. Over 300 million Indians use the platforms to pay various bills.
According to TheKredible, Paytm raised a lump sum of Rs 32343.13 crore through 16 funding rounds. Its latest round held in 2021 raised Rs 8200 crore; the round was led by BlackRock. The round saw participation from CPP Investments and Aditya Birla Capita. The company previously raised close to Rs 9.6 crore and Rs 7168 crore in 2020 and 2019 respectively. These rounds saw participation from Mark Schwartz, Ant Financial, Alibaba, and eBay among others.
Among its investors, Ant Financial holds around 23% of Paytm shares. While Sharma, founder of the company, has over 9%, CPP Investment has around 2% company shares.
FY23 saw the company’s EBITDA margin close to -14%, a huge improvement as compared to the previous year’s margins which was over -38%. Its assets turnover ratio saw an improvement from FY22’s over 36% to FY23’s approximate of 44%.
Paytm witnessed a revenue of Rs 8400 crore in FY23, an improvement from FY22’s Rs 5264 crore. With an expense of Rs 10130 crore, FY23 saw losses amounting to Rs 1776 crore. In its last previous fiscal year, the company recorded expenses of Rs 7601 crore and losses accumulating to Rs 2396 crore. With a current valuation of Rs 54222, the payment gateway put more than 30% into employee benefits and close to 10% went into advertising and promotional costs. In FY22, Paytm spent a little more than 30% in employee benefits.
Till date, the fintech company has made 23 investments and 14 acquisition deals. Paytm started its investment journey with MobiSwipe in 2012 and its latest investment was with Massive Mobility in 2022. XpressBees, Gadgets 360, Rooter were a few investments among others.
Paytm first acquired Near in 2015. It has taken control over companies like Insider.in, Balance, and EduKart till date. Its latest acquisition deal was with Creditmate in 2021.
Other companies in the industry that are up against Paytm are Bengaluru-based Cred, Delhi-based Bharatpe, Gurgaon-based Mobikwik, Maharashtra-based PhonePe.