Paytm raises $660 mn from T Rowe Price, SoftBank, Alipay, others

Paytm, the SoftBank-backed digital payments unicorn, has raised $660 million from new and returning investors. Last month, the Noida-headquartered company announced that it had raised an undisclosed sum from an investor group including US asset management firm T Rowe Price. 

Out of the $660 million, new investor T Rowe Price pumped in $152 million in Paytm parent One97 Communications, according to the company’s latest regulatory filings. SVF Panther, a Cayman Islands based entity owned b by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank’s, invested $202 million. Another returning investor Alipay brought in $203 million. 

Out of the remainder, Saudi Arabia-based Samba Financial Group invested $25 million, K2 Global, also an existing investor, brought in $20 million and Seoul-based Hana Investment company invested $15 million, the filings showed.

On December 6, the issue of 2.6 million shares was approved by One97 Communications at a price ranging between Rs 18,159.55 and Rs 18,234.94 a share, the filings showed. 

According to data compiled by VCCEdge, including the latest $660 million infusion, Paytm has so far raised a total of $2.93 billion, making it by far the single highest funded player in India’s booming fintech sector.

When Paytm announced the funding round last month, without disclosing the sum raised, multiple media reports at the time put the size of the round at $1 billion. Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma also told The Economic Times at the time that the round valued the company at $16 billion. Paytm had said that it would use the capital raised to grow its payments and financial services business over the next three years.

“At Paytm, we are committed to bringing half a billion Indians to the mainstream economy by

onboarding them in the formal financial ecosystem. This new investment by our current and new investors is a reaffirmation of our commitment to serve Indians with new age financial services,” Sharma had said in the statement issued in November.

Last week, One97 Communications posted consolidated losses at Rs 4,217.20 crore against Rs 1,604.34 crore in FY18 while revenues grew marginally. Standalone revenues stood at Rs 3391.61 crore against Rs 3229.38 crore in the previous year, registering a 5% year-on-year growth. The company claims to serve merchants in more than 2,000 towns across 650 districts across its several verticals.

In August 2018, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway invested an undisclosed sum in the company. The company raised $311 million through the round, separate filings show.