Paytm Mall has secured USD 160 million from the US-based online marketplace eBay, according to data sourced from the Registrar of Companies.
Earlier this month, eBay had announced that it has picked up 5.5 percent stake in the Noida-based firm but had not disclosed the investment amount. At the time, sources close to the transaction had told Economic Times the financing round is pegged at about USD 150 million. This transaction values the company at USD 2.9 billion. ET had reported the eBay funding in its April 22 edition.
As part of this deal, eBay’s global inventory is being made available to over 130 million active users on Paytm Mall and Paytm’s app ecosystem.
“This deal will also allow shopkeepers on our platform to source over a million unique international products from eBay’s global base,” Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma had told ET at the time. He said that cross border business will account for about 10-15 percent of Paytm Mall’s overall sales in the next one year.
The deal also comes at a time when Paytm Mall’s business has undergone significant restructuring, with the company moving away from a discounting and cash back-led strategy to following an online-to-offline (O2O) model.
In January, Paytm Mall shut its national e-commerce shipping business, which involved onboarding sellers and shipping products across the country. Over the last two years, the company has raised over $650 million from Alibaba, SoftBank and SAIF Partners — all existing investors in Paytm’s parent One97 Communications entity.
Paytm Mall has also slashed its monthly cash burn by a third to Rs 40 crore, from a peak of Rs 200 crore last year and had plans of generating revenue by offering services to offline sellers like advertising and marketing, ET reported earlier this month.
(Source Economic Times)
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