India’s Paytm eyes IPO by end-Oct, hopes to break even in 18 months-source
Paytm declined to comment.
Launched over a decade ago as a platform for mobile phone top ups, Paytm has grown quickly into a fintech firm offering services including insurance, gold sales, bank deposits, remittances and movie and flight ticketing.
Paytm’s online and offline payments and its lending business are core focus areas for the company, but the firm also wants to capitalise on the growing opportunities in gaming, travel and ticketing and financial services such as mutual funds and equities trading, the source said.
The company is pushing its payments hardware such as point-of-sale machines and other devices to merchants, the source said, adding Paytm’s software, which helps merchants manage their operations, would also be a key business over the next three to five years.
Among other rivals, Paytm’s merchant payments business will also compete with a combine of Indian conglomerate Reliance and Facebook’s WhatsApp, which have committed to making digital payments easier for India’s mom-and-pop stores.
($1 = 74.4700 Indian rupees)
(Reporting by Sankalp Phartiyal in New Delhi and Nupur Anand in Mumbai; Editing by David Holmes)
Paytm eyes IPO by end of October, hopes to break even in 18 months
“Hopefully Paytm will be able to go out before Diwali,” the source said.
The startup, which counts China’s Ant Group and Japan’s SoftBank among its backers, narrowed its operating loss to Rs 1,655 crore in the financial year ended March 31 from Rs 2,468 crore a year ago.
“Paytm is on the path to profitability now,” the source said.
Paytm declined to comment.
Among other rivals, Paytm’s merchant payments business will also compete with a combine of
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