India’s digital payments giant Paytm’s parent company One97 Communications has received approval from the capital markets regulator for its $2.2 billion or ₹16,600 crore initial public offering (IPO) that is likely to be India’s biggest ever listing, a source familiar with the development told news agency Reuters on Friday. The IPO has already been cleared by by the Securities and Exchanges Board.
Paytm is expecting to hit the bourses by the end of October or the first week of November and is planning to skip the pre-IPO share sale rounds to fast-track listing. The official disclosure of the listing is expected by the end of this week.
According to reports, Paytm is looking at a valuation of ₹1.47-1.78 lakh crore.
The fintech platform, which is also backed by Ant Group, SoftBank’s Vision Fund and Berkshire Hathaway, narrowed its operating loss to 16.55 billion rupees ($221.00 million) for the financial year that ended in March 2021 compared to 24.68 billion last year, Reuters reported. Ant Group is Paytm’s largest shareholder with nearly 30% stake.
From starting out as a digital wallet to simplify mobile recharging, Paytm rapidly grew into an all-round quick payment option. However, Paytm boomed in 2016 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced ‘demonetisation’ or a ban on high-value currency bank notes which boosted digital payments.
Apart from simple online payments, Paytm has now branched out into services including bill payments, insurance and gold sales, movie tickets, train and flight bookings, and bank deposits among other services.
With inputs from Agencies
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