After drumming up interest from investors all across the globe, Paytm is now receiving attention from the elite businessmen of the country. They’re steadily becoming self-aware of the rising economy of startups and also want to partake in the same with an investment in their own capacity.
Thus, a report from Economic Times suggests that chairmen of two of the prominent conglomerates of India are planning to buy a stake in the homegrown digital payments giant Paytm. Sunil Munjal, the chairman of Hero Corporate Services along with Saroj Poddar, chairman of Adventz Group are in talks with early investor and former IDFC Securities analyst Nikhil Vora for a stake purchase. This deal will be termed as a ‘secondary transaction’ in the startup ecosystem.
Nikhil Vora currently holds a 0.35 percent stake in the digital wallet company — a total of about 1.6 lakh shares. Though there’s currently no info on how much stake each of the two industrialists are looking to pick up but sources privy to the deal say,
They [Munjal and Poddar] will buy Rs 50 crore worth secondary stock at Rs 8,000 per share.
If this transaction goes through successfully then it will mark a partial exit for Vora, who has been invested in Paytm from the early days. It’s also being speculated that this investment will further boost the value of Paytm’s parent One97 Communications. There is chatter that it will eventually boost the company’s value by a quarter (and that’s a lot, seeing the size of Paytm).
Both the elite businessmen of the Indian conglomerates have denied to comment and Vora has debunked the report but stated that he might look for exit options eventually. And that time might come God knows when.
Previously, Paytm has secured a whopping $300 million investment that was led by Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek. It caused the valuation of the digital payments giant to swell up to a staggering valuation of about $4.8 billion (Rs. 32,250 crores). The Alibaba-backed company is now looking to divide its businesses into separate entities and spin them off to build focused categories for each business.
For those unaware, Paytm has already started work on its independent e-commerce spin-off company. It is dumping most of the funds into the same to help Alibaba gain a strong foothold against existing competitors Amazon and Flipkart. Alibaba is also expanding its foothold in the country and has plans to set up a dedicated office space next to Amazon in Mumbai. It has already hired some key executives and plans to gulp Paytm’s e-commerce business to enter India.
