Warren Buffett backed Berkshire Hathaway Inc bought a stake in One97 Communications – the company behind Paytm – India’s biggest digital-payments brand, BloombergQuint (BQ) reported. This is the conglomerate’s first foray into the country’s startups.
Berkshire is set to acquire 3-4 percent of One97 in a deal that values the target at more than $10 billion, sources told BQ.
The Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led Paytm had reportedly been in talks with Buffet for a few months.
Started by Sharma in 2010, Paytm has become a leading digital payments and e-commerce firm in India. According to BQ, it recently got a payments bank licence and has started operations. Its key investors include Softbank, SAIF Partners, Alibaba Group and Ant Financial. Paytm also forayed into selling investment products like gold and mutual funds recently.
Expanding Footprints
One97, which was last valued at $7 billion, according to Bloomberg after it raised $1.4 billion from SoftBank Group Corp in May, started as a mobile payments and recharge business in 2010.
The company has since then created a host of payment solutions such as Paytm’s digital wallet and Paytm Payments Bank, and is now looking to diversify into the mutual fund and insurance space through Paytm Money Ltd. Paytm wallet has nearly 300 million users.
In the last one year, Paytm has also built a separate e-commerce marketplace Paytm Mall. Earlier this month, it said it is targeting $10 billion in annualised gross sales by March 2019 on its e-commerce platform.
(With inputs from BloombergQuint)
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