Paytm Mall Lodges 70 Pct Net Loss Despite Surging Revenue

Paytm Mall, the eCommerce unit of One97 Communications, reported a net loss of  ₹1,787 crore on total sales of ₹774.8 crore in the year ended 31 March 2018.

According to a report in Live Mint, citing business intelligence platform Tofler, the reported net loss is nearly 150 times more than the losses it reported for the 2016 to 2017 time frame. At the same time that Paytm Mall is posting a net loss, its revenue is soaring, up 100 times from the fiscal year 2017, reported Live Mint, citing its latest filing with the Registrar of Companies. It had negative reserves of ₹1,062 crore in FY18 from a surplus of 1,284 crore in FY17, noted the report.

“We will continue to invest towards new user addition and invest behind adding merchants on the platform. Paytm Mall currently has 10 million merchants and we will double it in the next 6-12 months,” said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and chief executive officer of One97 Communications told Live Mint in a phone interview. Paytm Mall, which launched in April of 2017, has raised $640 million and commands a valuation of $2.23 billion. Its currently the third largest eCommerce player in India and has been pulling out all the stops to compete against Walmart’s Flipkart and Amazon India, noted the report.

Earlier in October Paytm said it registered as many as 137 million transactions across UPI, which gives the firm a 33 percent market share. That comes, reported The Economic Times, as the total number of transactions was up 30 percent month on month in September, to nearly 406 million transactions, estimated the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). The parent company, One97 Communications, has said it has been enabling what is known as BHIM UPI (BHIM is short for Bharat Interface for Money) for offline payments, with reach that extends to 5 million merchants that accept Paytm UPI.

In a statement, Deepak Abbot, who serves as senior vice president at Paytm, said at the time that “it is encouraging to see the widespread adoption of Paytm BHIM UPI, as it is fast becoming a preferred payment method for millions of users, making us the leader in UPI payments.”