Indian Business Baron Ratan Tata Invests In Paytm

E27.CO: Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons Ratan Tata has made an undisclosed amount of investment in mobile payments and commerce company Paytm. With this investment, Tata will pick up a small stake in One97 Communications, the company that owns and operates Paytm. He will also take on the role of an advisor at the company.

This is his fifth investment after Snapdeal, Urban Ladder, Bluestone and CarDekho. Recently, Ant Financial Services Group, an online financial services company operated by Alipay (a unit of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group) agreed to acquire 25 per cent stake equity in One97 Communications.

“I am very happy that Ratan Tata has put faith and trust in our values and mission. There is no better advisor for Paytm on building India’s most trusted mobile payment and commerce platform,” said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder of Paytm. “Paytm’s ambition is to build 100 million wallets by this year end and we already have 25 million active wallets. Our average wallet balance is INR 150 (US$2.39) and we do one million transactions a day across the Paytm app and other merchants like Uber , BookMyShow, etc.,” he added.

The mobile commerce platform recently announced its plans to expand to Singapore and other Southeast Asian markets such as Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. The company also appointed Milaap Founder Sourabh Sharma to establish and oversee its presence in these geographies. Paytm intends to bring to these markets its app-driven payment for utility bills in the first phase, and will primarily cater to areas such as bill payments, transportation, parking, etc.