Paytm gets funded by T Rowe Price after SoftBank and Ant Financial


By MYBRANDBOOK


Paytm gets funded by T Rowe Price after SoftBank and Ant Financial

In a new financing round, US-based asset management firm T Rowe Price has funded Paytm. The payment company is now valued at $16 billion after it has raised $1 billion and has become one of the sought after start-ups in the country.

 

T Rowe Price, along with Discovery Capital and D1 Capital, has put about $400 million (Rs 2,871 crore) in the Noida-based company.

 

SoftBank and Alibaba Group affiliate Ant Financial have earlier invested $200 million (Rs 1,435 crore) and $400 million (Rs 2,871 crore) respectively in Paytm.

 

Both Discovery and D1 have earlier bought shares of Paytm in secondary transactions and now have invested primary capital in this round.

 

Interestingly, SoftBank, which owns just about 20% in Paytm parent — One97 Communications — cannot sell its share for the next five years. If Paytm manages to go public during this timeline, SoftBank can choose to sell its shares or it can offer to sell its share to existing investors, in case it still remains a private firm.

 

According to Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the company will use the new capital to double down on the merchant expansion in both online and offline channels while making an aggressive push in the financial services business.

 

“Lending, insurance and new-age banking will be the focus for us. We are in the final process of applying for a general insurance license. On merchants’ side, we have 15 million of them and want to add 20 million more in the next two years,” said Sharma.

 

Paytm is allocating Rs 10,000 crore for the next three years to expand deeper into rural markets. The company will focus on its payments gateway business as it reduces spends on incentivising peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions on Unified Payments Interface (UPI). 

 

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