<article>One97 Communications Ltd, the parent company of mobile payments app Paytm, widened its net loss by 70% in the last financial year as higher expenses offset a surge in revenue, showed data from business intelligence platform Tofler.</article>

One97 Communications Ltd, the parent company of mobile payments app Paytm, widened its net loss by 70% in the last financial year as higher expenses offset a surge in revenue, showed data from business intelligence platform Tofler.
The company, backed by China’s Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, posted loss of ₹1,490.7 crore in the year ended 31 March, 2018. Paytm had a ₹879 crore loss in the previous year. The figures were sourced by Tofler from the Registrar of Companies.
Paytm did not report any major exceptional item last year, compared with ₹591.3 crore in the previous year. Total revenue climbed more than fourfold to ₹3,314 crore, from ₹780 crore in FY17.
Expenses more than doubled because of an increase in employee, information technology and advertisements costs. Paytm spent ₹4,718 crore on expenses during the year against ₹1,947 crore in FY17.
Advertising and promotions comprised bulk of the total expenses at ₹2,917 in FY18, up from ₹967 crore a year earlier.
Paytm also spent ₹540 crore toward employee expenses in FY18. It included gratuity payments, provident fund contribution and salary, among other costs.
Paytm has managed to retain investor attraction despite its mounting losses. It had raised $300 million from Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Mint reported in August.
The company had carved out its e-commerce business Paytm Mall into a separate holding, named Paytm E-commerce Pvt. Ltd, in August 2016. The online retailer raised about ₹1,500 crore from Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. and existing investor Alibaba, as part of a ₹3,000 crore funding commitment that was initially announced in April, Mint reported in June.
Paytm had in May said it plans to invest ₹5,000 crore over the next three years as it looks to enhance bank transfer and other payments facilities for customers through its platform. It has also launched a mobile-based payment facility in Japan called PayPay in partnership with SoftBank and Yahoo Japan.
In January, the digital payments company had launched a new investment arm, Paytm Money Ltd, to offer investment and wealth management products.
It also entered the mutual fund distribution business in April and plans to offer shares of listed companies directly to customers, Mint reported in September.
Founded by Vijay Shekhar Sharma in 2000, One97 Communications started out as a mobile payments and mobile recharge business.
It currently ranks among the top three consumer internet companies in India and has more than 300 million registered users on its platform.
In July, it had claimed to have breached $4 billion in monthly gross transaction value, including recharges, bill payments and peer-to-peer transactions.
This article was first published on <a href="https://www.livemint.com/Companies/cjK3T36vZl1easaVBMXVNN/Swiggy-revenue-trebles-but-loss-doubles-too-in-201718.html">livemint.com</a>
<h3>Paytm Mall’s loss rises 150 times to ₹1,787 crore in FY18</h3>
Paytm Mall has reported a net loss of ₹1,787 crore on total sales of ₹774.8 crore in the year ended 31 March 2018 (FY18), nearly 150 times of the losses reported in 2016-17, according to data accessed from business intelligence platform Tofler. Paytm E-commerce Pvt. Ltd, the e-commerce arm of One 97 Communications Ltd that runs Paytm and Paytm Payments Bank, had reported ₹13.63 crore loss in FY17.
Paytm Mall’s revenue, however, soared 100 times from ₹7.35 crore in FY17, according to its latest filing with the Registrar of Companies. It had negative reserves of ₹1,062 crore in FY18 from a surplus of 1,284 crore in FY17.
Paytm Mall was carved out from parent One97 Communications in August last year. It received a capital commitment of about ₹2,900 crore (about $450 million) from Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. and existing investor Alibaba Group Holding Ltd in four tranches, Mint reported in April.
“We will continue to invest towards new user addition and invest behind adding merchants on the platform. Paytm Mall currently has 10 million merchants and we will double it in the next 6-12 months,” said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and chief executive officer of One97 Communications, over the phone.
Since its inception in April 2017, Paytm Mall has raised $640 million valuing it at $2.23 billion.
Paytm Mall, currently the third biggest player in India’s rapidly growing online retail space, is sparing no efforts to compete with market leaders Walmart Inc.’s Flipkart and Amazon India. Paytm Mall is inspired by Alibaba’s T-mall in China.
In the run up to the festive season sales, Paytm Mall set aside a marketing budget of ₹501 crore in its efforts to garner a bigger slice of India’s expanding e-commerce market.
The company is aiming for a nearly threefold rise in annualized gross sales to $10 billion by March 2019, Sharma had said in August. It is also looking to expand its fashion and home businesses this year.
Paytm Mall bets on the Offline to Online model, or O2O, of T-Mall in China to be successful in India, a departure from the usual inventory-led business or creation of private labels.
As a part of the model, the orders are serviced from local brand stores, offering synergies in logistics and warehousing. These brands also have their own web pages on Paytm Mall for easy access.
According to the company, offline stores registered on its platform drive over 60% of its sales.
Paytm Mall currently serves 700 towns across India.
This article was first published on <a href="https://www.livemint.com/Companies/2qbxHBTEys8gGM6uU83wcK/Paytm-Malls-loss-rises-150-times-to-1787-crore-in-FY18.html">livemint.com</a>
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One97 Communications Ltd, parent company of mobile payments app Paytm, widened net loss by 70% in the last financial year as higher expenses offset a surge in revenue.

Paytm losses widen by 70% as expenses double in FY18

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Paytm losses widen by 70% as expenses double in FY18

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