Paytm, one of India’s most valuable startups, plans to raise up to $2.2 billion in an initial public offering, it said in draft papers submitted to the country’s market regulator on Friday.
The Noida-headquartered firm — backed by Alibaba, Berkshire Hathaway, and SoftBank among others — said it will issue new shares worth $1.1 billion and offer sale worth of $1.1 billion.
The startup, which competes with PhonePe and Google Pay, plans to use the fresh capital of $577 million to broaden its payments services offering and about $269 million to enter into new initiatives and explore acquisition opportunities, it said.
Paytm, which was launched in 2009, has expanded to a wide-range of services including money transfer, payments gateway, e-commerce marketplace, ticket booking, insurance, and digital gold. The platform has amassed over 333 million customers and onboarded over 21 million merchants, it said in the papers today.
“We have created a payments-led super-app, through which we offer our consumers innovative and intuitive digital products and services. We offer our consumers a wide selection of payment options on the Paytm app, which include (i) Paytm Payment Instruments, which allow them to use digital wallets, sub-wallets, bank accounts, buy-now-pay-later and wealth management accounts and (ii) major third-party instruments, such as debit and credit cards and net banking,” the Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led describes itself.
A look at Paytm’s numbers shared in the draft prospectus (Paytm)
Paytm’s IPO plans come at a time when the pandemic has fuelled India’s digital economy and local stock exchanges are showing good appetite for consumer tech stocks. Indian food delivery giant Zomato’s $1.3 billion IPO this week was quickly subscribed by retail and anchor investors.
A lot is riding on a successful IPO of Paytm — which reported a consolidated loss of $233.6 million for the financial year that ended in March this year, down from $404 million a year ago.
This is a developing story. More to follow…
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