The world’s biggest e-commerce firm Alibaba has decided to move to India, claimed Any Financial Services Group, an affiliate of Alibaba. It is stated that the most valuable e-commerce firm has inked a deal to acquire 25 percent of stake in One97 Communications that owns Paytm, an Indian mobile payments and e-commerce platform.
Notably, both the sides have not revealed the financial details of the deal, but three sources that are aware of it claim that Ant would be paying $200 million for the stake and that it will stump up an additional $375 million in tranches that are based on meeting the performance targets. The sources claim that the latest deal tranche valued One97 at $800 million and that the valuation might rise up to $1.5 billion.
It was reported in the last month that Alibaba is planning to buy Paytm tipping at an imminent entry of the Chinese e-commerce firm inIndia. Regarding this, Cyril Han, Vice President of Ant Financial stated that the deal appears to seek to invest money into Paytm that is the latest mobile payment and e-commerce platform in the country with around 25 million orders per month. The portal has over 23 million mobile wallet users. Paytm provides tickets, recharges and deals apart from hosting a combined marketplace to provide bargains to the shoppers interested in purchasing shoes, clothing, accessories and other products.
Though Alibaba is the biggest e-commerce portal, it is trails behind the other big portals when it comes to entering the Indian online industry. Other global portals such as eBay and Amazon have already established sizeable Indian operations. The executive further added that Indian is a significant market as it has a huge population as in China and the smartphone growth is also impressive leading to more users opting for mobile payments and shopping.
Previously, Paytm was tipped to receive a funding of $575 million from Alibaba for 25 percent to 30 percent of stakes. Besides Alibaba, other firms such asNew Yorkbased Tiger Global,Singapore’s Temasek and Amazon are also interested in investing in the mobile payment and e-commerce portal.
