The digital payment giant Paytm has taken over a Delhi-based company called ‘NighStay Travels’ that helps the customers to book hotels last minute. The acquisition has been made for around $2o million (around Rs 130 crore) in a cash-and-equity deal, through which Paytm is entering the hospitality space as well.
Founded by Nasr Khan and Deepak Negi, NighStay is basically a mobile-based marketplace that offers its customers attractive deals and unbeatable prices for various luxury hotels. The company currently operates across 12 cities that are Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Goa, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Kochi, Pune, Agra and Chandigarh. Paytm will bring in the entire NightStay team.
Talking about the investment part, it has been reported that the hospitality company had raised $10 million in funding. It initially raised a seed funding round of $500,000, which was led by Vivek Bihani (Bedrock Venture Management Pvt. Ltd), Rajesh Sawhney (GSF founder) and Shailesh Vikram Singh (executive director at SeedFund).
Earlier, even a Bengaluru-based startup called ‘RoomTonite’ had the same concept as NightStay but it closed down completely in the previous year. Nowadays, if we talk about Paytm, the company is evolving as a considerable player in the field of travel and hospitality.
It seems that Paytm is on a buying spree, as it has lately acquired a number of companies including Alibaba backed TicketNew. Paytm initially started as a mobile recharge company and now it has made its entry into almost all the market segments, including payments bank.
Since Paytm is taking up major steps in marking its footsteps in different sectors of the Indian market space, the other digital payment companies need to pull up their socks and make much stronger plans for expansion.