Paytm quashes reports of stake sale by investors

New Delhi, Dec 2 (SocialNews.XYZ) Quashing rumours of a stake sale, sources close to India's leading financial services and payments firm Paytm said that global fintech giant Ant Financial is not planning to sell its shares in the company.

While reports claimed that Ant Financial is planning to sell its stake in the company, both Paytm and Ant denied them as rumours and called the reports 'false' and 'misleading'.

"The information is absolutely false and misleading. There has been no discussion with any of our major shareholders ever about selling their stake or becoming the controlling shareholder. Our mission is to empower half a billion Indians with digital financial services and pursue the vast opportunity presented by the digital financial revolution in our country. We are seeing a dramatic increase in revenues and acceleration of our path to breakeven," said a Paytm spokesperson.

Sources close to the company said that there has been no change in the ownership pattern of Paytm and the investors completely back its financial services foray which has now expanded pan-India.

Ant Group took to Twitter to deny the reports, saying: "The Reuters story is untrue. We are disappointed that Reuters decided to run the story based on false information."

According to the sources, the overall investor sentiment surrounding Paytm is at an all time high. Over the last several quarters, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic, Paytm has been constantly increasing the scope of its services, adding more use cases to the app as well as expanding fast into the financial services territory.

It has launched new insurance and wealth products which are getting adopted by its users as more people are transacting digitally in India. The progress has helped in instilling more confidence in all its investors and they expect expansion of these services going forward.

According to the senior executive of a PE firm that has invested in Paytm, "Every investor who has ever invested in Paytm has held on to the shares for at least five years and has always sold it at a profit. Post the company's last funding round a year back, it is seeing a strong momentum in its business wherein GMV has gone up by nearly 100 per cent. At the same time, many of its new businesses, particularly payment gateway, UPI money transfer, equity trading, lending, POS devices and advertising, are performing far ahead of the internal expectations. Paytm's FY20 revenue has increased to Rs 3,629 crore, even as burn has reduced by over 60 per cent in the last 18 months."

Source: IANS