E-commerce is one of the fastest-growing markets in the world and all e-commerce giants have one country in mind — India. With the largest middle-income group in the world that has enough money to make purchases, e-commerce giants like Amazon are trying their best to make it big in this part of the world. Also, why not? Everybody loves shopping from the comforts of their homes and stores like Amazon, Flipkart, and Myntra to name only a few are making it possible. Companies taking advantage of this e-commerce market in India are the payment agencies like PayTm. Narendra Modi’s demonetization announcement has fuelled this more and we see more and more people using PayTm rather than paying in cash, more so in the case of online shopping coupon. Lack of cash at the ATMs, the problem of standing in the queue in front of ATMs, is forcing people to go cashless and companies like PayTm are simply leveraging on the same.
What Is PayTm?
Almost all Indians are familiar with what exactly PayTm is. A part of One97 Communications, PayTm or Pay Through Mobile is a commerce and payment company based in India. Located in Noida, it was started in the year 2010 and is the first Indian company to receive funding from the Chinese giants Alibaba. It has more than 3 million merchants spread across the country and operates through PayTm wallet and PayTm payment gateway. It launched its services in Canada too and allows the Canadians to pay their utility bills through the app.
PayTm Making It Big
Right from the start, PayTm had a stronghold on the e-commerce market. They had raised more than $625 million before the Alibaba group funded them. It received an investment from a Taiwan-based company as well named Mountain Capital, a part of MediaTek. It was founded as a mobile recharge website and the wallet was launched in the year 2013. It is one of the largest payment wallets operating in the country and their profits increased significantly after the demonetization of 500 and 1000-rupee notes. Now we can see even grocery stores, and momo stalls accepting PayTm. PayTm offers and PayTm coupons are available encouraging users more. With the SoftBank groups in talks with the company for investing $1.4 billion, it can easily be said that it is still difficult to gauge the company’s growth in the Indian e-commerce market, at least, as far as the near future is concerned. If sources are to be believed, the deal with the bank is expected to value the company at a whopping $7 billion. This news comes as a relief as the company, in spite of making huge profits, are considering layoffs as foreign investors are squeezing funds. Nothing has been finalised yet and there probably would be more rounds of talks before the deal is finalised. SoftBank aims to invest $10 billion in the Indian market, PayTm being at the top of their list. Soft Bank was one of the earliest investors in Alibaba as well.
