Paytm is worth $10 billion now as 200 employees sell shares worth Rs 50 billion
Indian e-payment and e-commerce brand Paytm has become the second most valuable online firm after e-commerce major Flipkart at $10 billion. Around 200 employees of the company sold their shares from the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) for an amount of $50 million, media reports stated. Just days back, PTI reported citing unidentified sources that some former and existing employees of the company are mulling over a plan to sell shares worth about $50 million to new investors.Hedge fund Discovery Capital is one of the investors that has bought shares from Paytm’s parent One97 Communications under secondary transaction.In May last year, Paytm had raised USD 1.4 billion from SoftBank, which valued the company at $7 billion at that time. Paytm has been one of the prominent beneficiaries of the government’s move to scrap high denomination notes in 2016. It has seen manifold growth in transactions on its platform as well as expansion in number of users since then.
Just days back Paytm launched the Paytm Business app for merchants and businesses to accept payments on the platform. In addition, it will allow them to navigate their previous transactions along with a facility to view payments made to their bank accounts. The Paytm for Business app is now available to download in the Google Play store. The app is available in 10 regional languages, including Hindi and English.
The Paytm for Business app is wholly designed to facilitate the digital payments exchanged by merchants on a daily basis. The app classifies the transactions into different categories, alongside the bank transfers. Merchants can even generate QR codes and put them in their shops to allow customers to scan and pay the money. Paytm says that the merchants and businesses will be able to accept payments with zero commission charges, which means that the intermediary Paytm won’t take any share of the payments.
Paytm is an Indian e-payments and e-commerce brand based out of Delhi NCR, India. Launched in August 2010, it is a consumer brand of parent company One97 Communications. The name is an acronym for “Payment Through Mobile”. The company employs over 13,000 employees as of January 2017 and has 3 million offline merchants across India. It also operates the Paytm payment gateway and the Paytm Wallet.
