Paytm is competing with almost everyone in Indian e-commerce

• Paytm now offers hotel booking with its acquisition of NightStay.
  
• Earlier in January, Paytm had announced its entry into food delivery.
  
• It already operates in the ticketing business with Paytm Movies, e-commerce sector with Paytm Mall.

Paytm is one of the frontrunners of Indian startups and a leader in the digital payments in India. But it’s also competing head-on with almost every other business in the e-commerce space. In the last one month, the company has entered two new major segments – hotel booking and food delivery.

On January 30, Paytm announced the acquisition of NightStay, a four-year platform which helps users book hotel rooms and offers last minute deals.

While MakeMyTrip and Oyo Rooms have been dominating the hotel bookings space, the recent acquisition of NightStay will help Paytm become a one-stop shop for its over 230 million users and the potential ones.

Paytm already competes with MakeMyTrip in offering flight and train tickets. Vijay Shekhar Sharma took on BookMyShow when Paytm started selling movie tickets in 2016. BookMyShow revenue growth dropped to 27% in 2016-17 from 85% a year earlier.

Earlier in January, Paytm had also announced its partnership with foodtech unicorn Zomato to enter the food delivery segment and take on rival Swiggy.

With the Paytm Mall, the company has a foot in online retail- from apparels and accessories to electronics, footwear, and fitness equipments to name a few.

However, its success has been limited. Even with massive cashbacks and discounts, Paytm Mall had not been able to make an impact yet with reports reflecting that the company’s losses went up by 270% last year mainly because of its e-retail arm.

The Indian e-commerce segment is already crowded with Amazon and Walmart fighting it out, and now, Reliance Industries also planning to enter the market.

While there were rumours of the company planning to scale down its e-commerce operations, founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma had told ET that “it has no plans to leave the mall business”.

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