Paytm buys Nearbuy and Little to strengthen its offline play

Financial services platform Paytm announced that it has become the majority shareholder of the entity formed through the merger of Nearbuy.com and Little Internet.

With this deal, existing shareholders of Nearbuy, including Sequoia India will also become shareholders of the merged entity.

Paytm says that this partnership will further strengthen Paytm’s offerings for offline merchants by enabling them to acquire new customers through deals.

However, the size of the transaction was not disclosed.

According to the company, Nearbuy and Little work with over 40,000 small and large merchants across food, beauty, travel, and other categories. The combined entity will continue to enable customers to discover deals and save money whenever they step out, and also help merchants effectively utilise their inventory and acquire new customers.

Paytm’s goal is to equip its five million merchants tools to expand their business. At the same time, Paytm will serve its large consumer base by showcasing a bigger number of exciting deals on its platforms.

Speaking about the deal, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder & CEO of Paytm, said,

“This combination of Nearbuy and Little marks a great opportunity for us to reinforce our commitment to support small and large retailers in the new-age of mobile commerce and payments. I am sure consumers will love the greater selection and reach of everyday deals and discount offers.”

While Nearbuy.com Founders Ankur Warikoo, Ravi Shankar, and Snehesh Mitra added,

“We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Paytm and build Nearbuy + Little into the absolute consumer choice for everything local. The industry is young and Paytm’s consumer and merchant reach will benefit us tremendously.”

Additionally, Little Co-founders Manish Chopra and Satish Mani added,

“We are proud that our team has built one of the largest deals platform in the country within three years. The merger of the two deal platforms in the country and the partnership with Paytm will help merchants and customers bring business synergies and will further strengthen Paytm’s presence in the O2O space in India.”

Sharing some growth numbers, Paytm had stated last week that it has close to 28 crore (280 million) registered users, 18 crore (180 million) wallet users, and has done 250 crore (2.5 billion) annual transactions and touched nearly six million merchants.