Paytm eyes acquisition of Alibaba Pictures-backed TicketNew

Alibaba and SoftBank-backed Paytm is pulling out all the stops to get closer to Bookmyshow in ticket sales segment. And the easiest way to capture the market for any cash-laden platform is through acquisition of already existing players.

It seems Paytm is also adopting a similar strategy. The payment company is in advanced talks to acquire Chennai-based online movie ticketing platform TicketNew, according to ET. The acquisition may close as early as next month.

Interestingly, TicketNew is a property of Alibaba Pictures, an Alibaba Group company. Alibaba Pictures acquired a majority stake in Chennai-based ticketing platform in June 2017.

The report added Paytm will pay anywhere between $30 million and $40 million for TicketNew. Alibaba Pictures is selling the company at a price it bought it.

This will be the second acquisition by Paytm in the ticketing segment in less than a year. In June last year, Paytm acquired a majority stake in online ticketing platform, Insider.in.

Paytm, which ventured into ticketing segment two years ago, has been closing in on the market leader Bookmyshow at a very fast pace.

Growth in ticketing segment

In March 2016, Paytm announced a partnership with PVR Cinemas bringing movie tickets to its platform as a part of its nationwide foray in the online movie ticket segment.

In April 2017, it claimed to have sold 25 million tickets and crossed gross merchandise value of Rs 400 crore.

Early this year, the payment platform claimed it sold over 52 million movie and event tickets in 2017 which is 2X growth as compared with 2016.

The Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led company is eyeing to sell 100 million tickets in 2018. The company also plans to collaborate with production houses for offering customised analytics and marketing solutions.

Currently, the movie ticketing market in India is estimated to be worth nearly $2 billion and has been growing at 10 per cent annually. So far, the online movie ticketing market is only 15 per cent of the overall domestic market.

Paytm has identified movie ticketing as the next $1 billion gross transactions vertical, besides travel.