Myntra's Abhishek Rajan to head Paytm's travel business

Mobile wallet and e-commerce marketplace Paytm, run by Noida-based One97 Communication Ltd, has appointed Myntra's Abhishek Rajan as head of its travel unit.

The development was first reported by The Economic Times quoting Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma.

A Paytm spokesperson did not revert to a Techcircle.in query till the time of filing this report.

Rajan has been the mobile business head of Flipkart-controlled lifestyle e-tailer Myntra since June last year. An alumnus of Delhi College of Engineering and IIM Ahmedabad, Rajan is also the co-founder of Easy2commute.com, a carpooling website for daily commute in Delhi NCR.

Paytm had unveiled its travel vertical in December. First, the company clinched deals with Uber and IRCTC for its mobile wallet. Six months back, Paytm launched its bus ticketing marketplace. In October, Paytm tied up with online travel portals Goibibo, Ezeego1, TSI-Yatra and Via to allow domestic hotel booking on its platform.

The travel segment could be the fastest category to clock $10 billion in revenue for Paytm, Sharma was quoted as saying.

Paytm has been adding new categories in a bid to grow its gross merchandise value to $4 billion by 2015-end. It recently joined hands with BookMyShow (movie tickets), Zomato (food delivery) and others to enable hyperlocal services for its users. It also invested in hyperlocal services provider Jugnoo. A few years ago, Paytm announced its foray into the e-commerce space, putting itself in direct competition with giants such as Amazon, Flipkart and Snapdeal. Currently, Paytm has over 100 million wallet users who carry out over 75 million transactions every month.

In September, Paytm raised an undisclosed amount in fresh funding from NYSE-listed Alibaba Group Holding Ltd and existing investor Ant Financial, a privately-owned group firm controlled by Alibaba founder Jack Ma.

Paytm had previously raised funding from SAIF Partners, Intel Capital and Silicon Valley Bank (now InnoVen Capital). It also counts small shareholders like IDFC, Reliance Capital besides individual investors such as Nikhil Vora as its backers.