The food and grocery delivery platform acquired Paytm’s ticketing and movie business to strengthen its market presence. Paytm focuses on financial services and payments with digital goods commerce designed to help merchants scale up their businesses. The two companies have been executing the transactions for the past three months. This will mark the second biggest acquisition by the food tech and quick commerce company following the acquisition of Blinkit.
Paytm mentioned in a BSE filing that the agreement to sell its business to Zomato was signed for $244 million. Zomato previously invested $48 million in its two subsidiaries including Blinkit and Zomato Entertainment. The deal includes 280 existing employees from Paytm’s two subsidiaries” Insider and Ticketnew. The fintech platform acquired TicketNew in 2018 for 4 million USD after acquiring Insider in 2017. Entrackr reported. The development came after Paytm started laying off its employees in large numbers. The fintech reported an overall revenue of Rs 297 crore with an adjusted EBITDA of Rs 29 crore in FY24. The firm saw a stabilization in its revenue and merchant base metrics since April.
After this deal, Zomato will be able to scale up its operations and expand its services in the events business and will be able to take the movie business under its wing. The CEO of Zomato recently announced an investment of 12 million USD in the ticket and live event business with plans to solidify its position in the Indian Market. The ticketing business including sports, movies, and live event ticketing will operate in the Paytm app for a year during the transaction period. The transaction period is expected to last and close within this quarter. This acquisition is another step towards the business expansion of this food-tech company.
Paytm’s parent company One 97 Communications will transfer all its stake in its ticketing business and wholly-owned subsidiaries including Wasteland Entertainment and Orbgen Technologies to Zomato through slump sales. The CEO of Zomato, Deepinder Goyal mentioned that this investment will help the company to add more features and scale its services while offering more use cases to its customers. The food-tech and quick commerce platform plans to launch a new app called “District” to help consumers when they plan to go out. The share price of Zomato decreased by 13% to Rs 259.77 on the NSE yesterday.
Conclusion:
A food tech startup, Zomato acquired fintech startup Paytm’s ticketing and movie business for $244 million. The company plans to expand its business while introducing new use cases. The startup plans to use this deal to launch a new application called District to help customers while scaling up and expanding its operations in India. This food tech startup plans to enhance technology and get a larger customer base. Zomato made an investment of $48 million in its two subsidiaries. The deal includes a 100 percent stake in two subsidiaries of One 97 Entertainment. The ticketing business will operate in the Paytm app for 12 months during the transaction period.
