Expect Paytm Mall biz to break even in a year: Vijay Shekhar Sharma

Paytm Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma on Monday said he expects Paytm Mall, the company's ecommerce unit, to break even in a year's time.

Sharma maintained that Paytm will consider getting listed on stock exchanges only after 2021 when the financial services company starts generating cash.

"Paytm Mall business is close to break-even, $3 million EBIDTA loss a month and $1.2 billion-1.3 billion run rate. In a day, we do 275,000-300,000 orders a day. In festive season, this peaks to half a million orders a day, double of the average day," Sharma told PTI on the sidelines of the India Mobile Congress 2019.

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Asked if more funds would be pumped into Paytm Mall, Sharma said: "We have money in the bank, we have $260 million, so I would say that we can give more growth capital to it, so basically after a year, Paytm Mall would break even for sure".

Last year, Paytm Mall had raised close to Rs 2,900 crore from SoftBank Investment Holdings and Alibaba.com Singapore E-commerce in a deal that valued the online shopping venture of Paytm at $2 billion. Paytm Mall competes against giants like Flipkart and Amazon in the Indian e-commerce segment.

Earlier this year, US-based ecommerce firm eBay bought a 5.59 percent stake in Paytm Mall for $160 million (around Rs 1,101 crore), according to a regulatory filing by Paytm E-commerce Pvt Ltd. With that round, Paytm Mall had raised about $805 million in total funding across three rounds.

Alibaba's Singapore-based entity owned 30.15 percent stake in Paytm Mall, while SoftBank had a little over 21 percent post the investment.

Paytm Mall had reported a net loss of Rs 1,787 crore on total sales of Rs 774.8 crore in the year ended March 2018. On Paytm's IPO plans, Sharma said he has always aimed at an IPO after 2021.

"The plan for an IPO was always beyond 2021. I have always said we will look at an IPO when we start generating cash," Sharma said.

Paytm's losses for 2018-19 had nearly tripled to Rs 4,217.20 crore from Rs 1,604.34 crore in the year-ago period, as per reports.

(Edited by Evelyn Ratnakumar)

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