Alibaba has been roaming the globe acquiring or investing digital businesses. The most recent investment lands in India – marking an important entrant for Jack Ma’s firm.
According to multiple reports, Alibaba has led a funding round in Paytm, an Indian ecommerce and payments platform. A $200 million funding round was led by Alibaba investing $177 million. SAIF Partners kicked in the remaining $23 million according to the Business Standard. Alibaba executive K Guru Gowrappan has been added to the Paytm board. The investment by Alibaba delivers a Unicorn crown to Paytm – pushing the valuation to over $1 billion for the 5 year old firm.
Paytm recently won the Best Digital Wallet award at the 11th IAMAI India Digital Summit. It is India’s largest mobile payments and commerce platform having scaled to over 200 million registered users. Paytm has been labeled India’s biggest Fintech startup. Recently, Paytm opened up an innovation lab in Toronto, Canada led by Blackberry veteran Harinder Takhar. Paytm CEO and founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma expects to have 20,000 employees by the end of the year, according to a report in Canadian Business.
Double century!
Next milestone, 500 Mn by 2020. 🤘🏼Thank you India 🇮🇳 pic.twitter.com/uBlkUcKuER
— Vijay Shekhar (@vijayshekhar) February 27, 2017
Sharma also said he would like to buy a Rolex Watch when Paytm’s valuation hits $10 billion. Looks like he is almost there…
