Paytm is looking to make its next billion dollars in travelling and movie ticketing business

Paytm recently launched its new travel and movie ticketing business and the mobile wallet firm has high hopes regarding these new segments. The company, in order to become a $100-billion internet conglomerate, is hoping to get its next billion dollar revenues. For this, the Paytm will be coming face to face with some big players which are already present in the segment.

In terms of annualised revenue, Paytm’s phone recharge, utility bill payment and online retail arms are already billion-dollar businesses. The company is now hoping that its new segments to do well in the market.

Meanwhile, Paytm is also pushing its online-to-online (O2O) business-which accounts for 20% of its business, so it can achieve $1 billion in annualised revenue by incentivising users to pay at fuel stations and corner stores via its digital wallet.

"The best thing that we can do is capture as many markets, and the dumbest thing we could do is spread ourselves too thin," founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma told ET.

The phone recharge unit accounts for another 20% and the online marketplace, 40%. Remaining sales come through Paytm's tie-ups with large third-party merchants, including Uber and rail-ticketing platform IRCTC.

In the travel business, Paytm is up against travel website-MakeMyTrip, which is all set to consolidate its market-leader position with the acquisition of its closest rival Goibibo for an estimated $1.8-2 billion in October. Paytm, however, believes that it will soon be closing the gap by selling nearly 1-million tickets in October as against MakeMyTrip's 1.2 million monthly transactions in the July-September quarter.As for movie ticketing, Paytm said it had sold 6.5-million tickets since the launch of the business in March, with 30% month-onmonth growth. India's No.1 movie-ticketing company, Book-MyShow, is leagues ahead, having sold more than 52-million tickets in the first six months of this year.

Paytm is looking forward to woo customers with attractive cashback schemes to acquire customers, replicating Alibaba and its payments affiliate Alipay.

The new businesses are part of an integrated financial-technology play for Paytm and will not be standalone units, said Anil Kumar, CEO of research firm RedSeer.

"This is not to get into new revenue streams but to create a holistic ecosystem for themselves. Travel booking is already hyper-competitive, but by being part of these transactions they are able to get a good grip on the whole online payments ecosystem," Kumar told ET.
(image: Indiatimes)