Through a new financing round, the Noida-headquartered firm, Paytm has raised $1 Billion in its latest equity fundraise, named Series G funding. The company, now valued at $16 Billion, had its funding led by U.S. asset manager T Rowe Price with existing investors Ant Financials (contributed $400 million), SoftBank Vision Fund (contributed $200 million), and Discovery Capital also participating in the round.
The financing round was conducted as Paytm attempts to fight back giants such as Google, Walmart’s PhonePe, and Facebook. The newly raised capital will be used by Paytm to court merchants as the company looks to expand its presence among small and medium-sized businesses.
The company will also be working on expanding their offerings in consumer internet, bringing new-age financial services such as lending, insurance, investments, stockbroking to the masses.
The company will invest Rs. 10,000 Cr. over the next 3 years, aimed at bringing financial inclusion to more underserved users in the country.
Today, we open next chapter in Paytm’s journey of India’s financial inclusion. We commit to invest additional ₹10,000 crore to serve financially unserved / underserved.
Thank you for your guidance and support.
Dedicating it with my school time favorite Jai Shankar Prasad poem:— Vijay Shekhar (@vijayshekhar) November 25, 2019
Two years ago, Paytm led the market in peer to peer payments, seeing its daily usage spike with the Indian Government invalidating much of the cash in circulation. The market is now dominated by Google Pay and Flipkart’s PhonePe with Google Pay having over 67 million monthly active users.
Competitors like Google Pay have noted that the market is not very lucrative for payment players to make money. Sajith Sivanandan, Managing Director and Business Head of Google Pay, has urged in a conference for local payment bodies to ensure every stakeholder had incentives to operate.