Paytm files for Rs 16,600 crore IPO; Antfin to sell 5% stake

India’s digital payment firm Paytm, one of India’s most valuable startups, told regulators that it is planning to sell $2.2 billion in shares. The company submitted the IPO-related draft papers to the country’s market regulator on Friday.

As a part of the IPO, Paytm
will issue fresh shares worth 83 billion rupees and sell an equal amount of
shares through a sale offer, according to its prospectus filed with Indian
regulators.

Also Read: Paytm IPO: Value, opening date, all you need to know

The offering is the latest in a wave of IPOs in India, with food delivery firm Zomato this week raising $1.3 billion.

Food delivery corporation Zomato, has launched its initial public offering on Saturday. The IPO – India’s biggest this year
– will be open for subscription till Friday, July 16, 2021. Zomato has fixed the price
band of its  IPO at Rs 72-76 per share of the face value of Rs 1 each. The
company is expecting to raise Rs 9,375 crore through the offer.

Also Read: How Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal cut jitters ahead of mega IPO. Read on

Paytm, which has its headquarters in Noida, is backed by Chinese tycoon-led Alibaba that has around 30% stake in the company, Berkshire Hathaway, and SoftBank among others. 

The start-up’s biggest competitors in India, the world’s second-largest internet market, are PhonePe and Google Pay. Paytm aims to utilise the capital of $577 million to broaden its payments services offering and about $269 million to enter into new initiatives and explore acquisition opportunities, the draft said.

Since 2010, Paytm has become a
key digital payments enterprise in a country like India which is dominated by cash transactions.

Paytm has largely benefited from the government’s efforts to curb cash transactions —
including the cancellation of nearly all banknotes in 2016 — and from the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to the company’s regulatory filings, Paytm Payments
Bank has 333 million customers as of March 31. In fiscal year 2020-21, the company processed transactions worth more than four trillion rupees ($54 billion)

Paytm was launched in 2009 to help users easily make digital payments from their phones. It has now has expanded to a wide range of services in the past decade.

Today Paytm undertakes functions like payments gateway, an e-commerce marketplace, ticket booking, and also sells insurance and digital gold.