Paytm raises $1 bn from T Rowe, Ant Financials‍, SoftBank, others

Paytm, India’s largest digital payments company, has raised $1 bn in a funding round led by the US-based asset manager T Rowe Price. The other investors are existing investors SoftBank and Ant Financials, which have invested $200 mn and $400 mn respectively. Existing investor Discovery Capital and D1 Capital also participated in the round. Company-founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma confirmed the investments. The funding round valued Paytm at $16 bn, making it the second most valued Indian startup after Flipkart. In 2018, Flipkart was valued at $21 billion when Walmart acquired a majority stake in the company. Paytm’s investment comes almost a year after it had raised money from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway in September 2018. The funding round had valued Paytm at $10 billion. (Also read:  Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma to take home Rs 3 cr in remuneration in current fiscal ) [caption id=“attachment_7695751” align=“alignnone” width=“1024”] The funding round valued Paytm at $16 bn, making it the second most valued Indian startup after Flipkart. Image: Reuters[/caption] The total money raised by Paytm is about $3.5 bn after the recent funding round. The money will be used to double down on increasing reach with merchants — both offline and online. Sharma told dailies that it will also apply for a new general insurance licence. Paytm already has 15 mn merchants and wants to expand its reach to 20 mn in a couple of years. The company said it will spend $10,000 crore in the next three years to expand its reach in rural areas. Meanwhile, the company’s losses increased by 165 percent over last year. In 2018-19, Paytm’s parent company One97 posted Rs 3,959.6 crore in net losses compared to Rs 1,490 crore in 2017-18. The revenue in the same period marginally rose from Rs 3,229 crore in 2017-18 to Rs 3,319 crore in 2018-19.