Paytm Mall close to securing $300 million from Softbank in latest funding round

By

Maverick Martins

Published
Nov 28, 2017

Japanese investor Softbank is the front runner to invest in online marketplace Paytm Mall’s latest funding round and expected to pump in 1932 crore rupees ($300 million) into the e-commerce entity of Paytm.
 

Paytm Mall was in talks with investors from September this year for raising funds between 3,000 crore rupees (approx $451 million) and 4,000 crore rupees (approx $ 601 million) in a new funding round that they aim to close by the end of the year.
 
Paytm Mall has held initial talks with Japanese investment giant SoftBank for leading a $500-600 million financing round. SoftBank is learnt to be putting around $300 million into Paytm Mall, the Economic Times reported citing sources.

If the funding is successful it will give a huge boost to Paytm Mall’s ambition of becoming the number 3 e-commerce firm in India. The company is also in talks with some USA investors to raise the remaining $300 million.
 
Paytm Mall’s aggression to take on leading online retailers like Flipkart and Amazon has already cost the firm as it had posted a total loss of Rs 13.63 crore (approx $2.1 million) between August 2016 and March 2017.
 
With Global e-commerce giant Amazon making a fresh injection of Rs 2900 crore (approx ($443 million) into Amazon Seller Services and Flipkart loaded with $4 billion it raised from Softbank, Tencent Holdings, eBay and Microsoft, Paytm Mall is in desperate need of funds to keep making progress into the e-commerce market.
 
“The funding proposal is yet to be discussed with the company board. However, there are informal commitments that have come through from investors. They still need to set a valuation for the transaction as the initial capital from Alibaba and SAIF was an internal round,” said one of the sources quoted by ET.
 
The Chinese business Alibaba and their payments affiliate, Ant Financial, hold a majority stake in Paytm Mall.