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Paytm, the India based e-commerce startup that competes against Amazon, is raising $400m. Paytm was valued at around $2.8b during its last funding round in August last year when it raised $680 million from Alibaba affiliate Ant Financial.
The decision for Paytm to raise more money instead was taken earlier this month in Hangzhou, China, where Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma attended the company’s board meeting. The new payments business will be 51% owned by Sharma himself, with the remaining 49% by the company. Most of the fresh funding will be used to set up and expand the new bank, which is being developed as a way of growing Paytm’s presence across the bigger e-commerce marketplace. “Earlier, we were planning to raise the funding for our payments business separately [but] now we have decided to raise more funding at a consolidated level,” said Sharma in an interview with TechCrunch. This, according to him, could also help Paytm attract a stronger valuation
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