Paytm files for $2.2 billion IPO

Paytm, one of India’s most valuable startups, plans to raise up to $2.2 billion in an initial public offering, it said in draft papers submitted to the country’s market regulator on Friday.

The Noida-headquartered firm — backed by Alibaba, Berkshire Hathaway, and SoftBank among others — said it will issue new shares worth $1.1 billion and offer sale worth of $1.1 billion.

The startup, which competes with PhonePe and Google Pay, plans to use the fresh capital of $577 million to broaden its payments services offering and about $269 million to enter into new initiatives and explore acquisition opportunities, it said.

Paytm, which was launched in 2009, runs a wide-range of services including money transfer, payments gateway, e-commerce marketplace, ticket booking, insurance, and digital gold. The platform has amassed over 333 million customers and onboarded over 21 million merchants, it said in the papers today.

“We have created a payments-led super-app , through which we offer our consumers innovative and intuitive digital products and services. We offer our consumers a wide selection of payment options on the Paytm app, which include (i) Paytm Payment Instruments, which allow them to use digital wallets, sub-wallets, bank accounts, buy-now-pay-later and wealth management accounts and (ii) major third-party instruments, such as debit and credit cards and net banking,” the firm describes itself.

A look at Paytm’s numbers shared in the draft prospectus (Paytm)

This is a developing story. More to follow…