After investing in Indian e-commerce majors Flipkart and Snapdeal, Japanese multinational conglomerate SoftBank Group is now set to invest in another Indian e-commerce space Paytm Mall. It is estimated that Paytm Mall may receive a funding around $500-600 millions in a fresh round.
As per the reports, SoftBank will put around $300 million into the e-commerce venture operated by Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s Paytm E-commerce Pvt Ltd.
Paytm Mall has already received funding from Chinese e-tailing company Alibaba, which now holds a majority stake in the company. Also, SoftBank is one of the investors of One97 Communications, the parent company of Paytm wallet and holds around 20 percent.
The telecom conglomerate already holds majority stakes in Snapdeal, which it tried to merge with Flipkart, but that didn’t happen.
If the deal goes through this will be yet another big investment by Masayoshi Son in an Indian venture. Paytm Mall is also engaged with U.S. investors, which holds similar interests as Alibaba, for a likely participation in the round.
“The funding proposal is yet to be discussed with the company board. However, there are informal commitments that have come through from investors. They still need to set a valuation for the transaction as the initial capital from Alibaba and SAIF was an internal round,” said a person familiar with the development.
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Jack-Ma led Alibaba currently holds more than 50 percent of the stakes in Paytm Mall, in which he invested $200 million from Alibaba Group and SAIF Partners.
Paytm Mall reported a net loss of Rs 13.63 crore on total sales of Rs 7.35 crore between August 2016 and 31 March 2017, as per the filings with Registrar of Companies (RoC).
(First reported on Times of India)