Vijay Shekhar Sharma opens next chapter at Paytm as it raises $1 billion from T Rowe, SoftBank and others

• Paytm raised $1 billion from US asset management firm T. Rowe Price, SoftBank and others.
• Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led Paytm is now valued at $16 billion.
• In FY19, Paytm had clocked in a gross transaction value of $50 billion through 5.5 billion transactions.

Indian digital payments giant Paytm raised $1 billion from US asset management firm T. Rowe Price, SoftBank and others. Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led Paytm is now valued at $16 billion.

“Today, we open next chapter in Paytm’s journey of India’s financial inclusion. We commit to invest additional ₹10,000 crore to serve financially unserved and underserved,” wrote Sharma in a tweet.

Currently, serving merchants in over 2000 towns and cities spanning across 650 districts, Paytm aims to bring low cost mobile enabled financial services to rural India.

The round was led by T Rowe and SoftBank invested $200 million while Alibaba’s Ant Financial invested $400 million, along with participation from Discovery Capital.

With the latest funding, Paytm will push forward its move in the Indian insurance industry and new age banking, Sharma told TOI.

Interestingly, SoftBank’s funding comes at a time when the Japanese investment firm is reportedly slowing down on investments and bets after the WeWork IPO debacle.

In the financial year 2018-19, Paytm had clocked in a gross transaction value of $50 billion through 5.5 billion transactions. It also set a target of 12 billion transactions by FY20.

The company said that the fast growth came due to the wide adoption of Paytm’s digital payments solutions across sectors like retail payments, fees, utility payments, travel booking, entertainment, games and more.