Paytm Mall incurs Rs 1,787 Cr loss for Rs 775 Cr revenue in FY18

Paytm e-commerce arm Paytm Mall has recorded revenue of Rs 775 crores, which is about 100 times than the last financial year. However, losses for the SoftBank-backed venture ballooned by 131X to Rs 1787 crore in the financial year 2017-18 as compared to Rs 13.63 crore in the previous fiscal, reveals business data platform Tofler.

Paytm Mall was hived off from parent entity One97 Communications in August 2017. Early this year, it raised about $445 million (about Rs 2,900 crore) from SoftBank and Alibaba on a valuation of $2 billion in the financing round.

Paytm Mall claims to be the third largest horizontal e-commerce platform after Flipkart and Amazon. While the company doesn’t give the number of consumers shopping on the platform, it claims that 10 million merchants transacting on the marketplace.

Alibaba and Ant Financial together held about 55 per cent of Paytm Mall.

Unlike Amazon and Flipkart, Paytm Mall has a sharp focus on bringing small merchants online. It follows O2O (offline to online) strategy and eyes at unorganised markets across segments including electronic, fashion and FMCG.

Besides aforementioned categories, the company has also been ramping up grocery vertical to against rivals Amazon and Flipkart. It is forging partnerships with regional retailers and corporates such as Big Bazaar.

Recently, the marketplace has integrated largest e-grocer BigBasket (also backed by Alibaba) on its app. Earlier this month, Paytm revealed that it has allocated Rs 501 crore towards the ongoing festive season sales.

Paytm Mall has relatively weak leadership team as compared to Flipkart and Amazon. However, it recently hired Srinivas Mothey, Milind Pathak, Utkrisht Kumar, Nikhil Dhoka and Rohan Chhazed to beef up its top management.