Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is likely to lead a $200 million investment along with SAIF Partners in Indian digital payments and e-commerce company Paytm.

With this fresh capital infusion, the Chinese Internet giant will also increase its stake in the Noida-based company. According to sources, Alibaba’s stake in Paytm Ecommerce will go up to 60 per cent. At present, Alibaba and its sister concern Ant Financial (formerly Alipay), a payments and wallet company, hold about 40 per cent in the Indian company.

Eye on rivals

The funds infusion comes as the Chinese firm looks for a formal entry into the Indian market, to take on the likes of Flipart and Amazon.

According to a Registrar of Companies filing that was accessed on business research platform Tofler, Paytm E-commerce will receive about $177 million from Alibaba.com Singapore ECommerce Ltd and the rest from Saif Partners.

According to the filing, the funds were raised at a higher valuation than what was set on February 7 by Akhilendra Singh & Associates, chartered accountants.

The allotment of shares will be completed within 6-12 months. Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s payments bank and digital wallet business is not a part of this deal.

Deal with Snapdeal coming?

According to experts, the deal could also signal a major consolidation between Paytm and Snapdeal.

The latter has been finding it difficult to raise funds in the last 15 months and has laid off a large number of employees to bring its costs down.

Alibaba has a less than 5 per cent stake in Snapdeal, but SoftBank, in which Alibaba is a board member, has a majority stake in the company, founded by Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW