SoftBank's stake rises to 12% in Paytm Mall while Alibaba holds over 50%

Paytm Mall, that announced $445 million fresh funding round from SoftBank and Alibaba, has finally received $110 million in its third tranche, reveals RoC filing. With the latest funding, the e-commerce platform has collected $220 million from the committed amount.

In April this year, both the Japanese and the Chinese Internet conglomerate committed to investing the aforementioned amount.

The infusion of the new fund has also increased SoftBank’s stake to 11.99 per cent while bringing down a combined stake of Alibaba and Ant Financial to 50.8 per cent. Alibaba and Ant Financial poured in about $177 million into Paytm Mall in its $200 million round on March last year.

Paytm Mall has been continuously enhancing the product and eyeing to emerge as one of the mainstream players in the e-commerce space. It has been trying every maneuver to establish a faithful customer base. Thus, it has been betting big on O2O (online-to-offline) commerce.

The third tranche from SoftBank and Alibaba gives required ammunition in Paytm Mall’s armour to fight the e-commerce battle at a bigger ground that involves deep-pocketed Flipkart and Amazon.

Besides, SoftBank, which was betting big on Flipkart and now plans to exit soon, has a found a new e-commerce platform to put the money on.

SoftBank Corp’s association with Paytm goes back to May last year, when the Japanese conglomerate invested in the digital payment company. The deal the valued the company at about $7 billion post-money (including the investment) and took SoftBank’s stake to about 20 per cent.

The development was first reported by ET.