Brother from another mother

Paytm’s is becoming India’s Alibaba

Paytm has seen the giddying heights, and the nauseating lows.

High points:

• It’s users grew by 100% ( 125 mn users to 280 mn users).
• Launched a payment bank.
• Investment of $680mn by Alibaba.
• Read how it all happened.

Low points:

• Earlier people loved Paytm, not after note-ban.
• Cobrapost sting about sharing user data with the government.

Now what:
It’s transforming itself as India’s Alibaba.

• Paytm wallet is Alipay. It is aiming at 500 mn users by November 2018.
• It launched one of India’s 3 payment banks.
• Paytm Mall one, it’s online to offline. It’s a step closer to becoming Alibaba. In fact Alibaba invested INR 2900 crores in April.

Will it succeed?

• In the short term, Paytm is flushed with capital, without the burden of servicing debt. Hence, it will build its O2O offering, with the help of discounts and cash-back.
• In the long term, Paytm Mall will slow down. Kevin Hillstorm, an online retail expert explains here & here.