Paytm crosses 1.4B transactions in March; wealth management unit to open R&D centre in Pune

Paytm Money, the wealth management arm of Indian fintech giant Paytm, on Thursday said it had opened a new research and development centre in Pune to drive product innovation in equity, digital gold, and mutual funds.

The startup said it planned to hire over 250 front and back-end engineers, and data scientists to build new wealth products and services.

"We need solid engineering talent to ensure we meet our ambitions. Pune is famous for its high-quality education and offers a great talent pool along with good infrastructure and great weather," said Varun Sridhar, CEO of Paytm Money.

He added that Paytm believes Pune is poised to become the next big innovation hub for fintech.

"We believe Pune is poised to become an innovation hub for fintech and was a natural choice for Paytm Money’s expansion plans.”

The Bengaluru-based unit of Paytm, which is headquartered in Noida, has seen substantial traction in its wealth management business, and has become among the most used platforms for retail investing, after the likes of Zerodha. It is targeting over 10 million users, and 75 million yearly transactions in FY21, mostly from small towns and cities.

Paytm Money offers options to invest in a host of financial instruments such as digital gold, equities, IPOs, F&O, ETFs, and mutual funds. The platform hosts educational webinars from time to time to drive user growth, as well as awareness around its current offerings.

Seperately, Paytm said it processed over 1.4 billion transactions in March, led by growth in offline payments and financial services.

The adoption of IoT-based payment devices such as all-in-one QR, POS and Android Smart POS led to an increase in offline payments, and the company said it is aiming to bring into its folds at least 50 million more merchants over the next few years.

Paytm recently announced that its payment gateway business registered over 750 million monthly transactions, having already surpassed volumes to pre-COVID levels, driven by increased adoption of online payments from segments, including BFSI, retail and D2C ecommerce, utilities, edtech, food delivery, digital entertainment, gaming, etc.

The fintech giant has applied to constitute a New Umbrella Entity in partnership with several players including Ola, aiming to develop innovative digital payments solutions.