Paytm Mall trims losses by 34% in FY19 to Rs1,171 crore

BENGALURU : Paytm Mall, the e-commerce arm of digital payments platform Paytm has trimmed its FY19 losses by 34% year-on-year to around Rs1,171.44 crore during the financial year ended March 2019 (FY19), according to documents sourced from business information platform Tofler. In the previous financial year, Paytm Mall reported losses of Rs1,787.73 crore.

Paytm’s e-commerce arm, which was carved out from the parent company One97 Communications in August 2017 reported a 20% rise in operational revenues to Rs893 crore in FY19, which increased from around Rs744.15 crore in the previous financial year.

The company also reported an ‘other income’ of Rs75.3 crore in FY19, which increased more than 2 times when compared to the previous year.

Total expenses for FY19 reduced marginally by 20% year-on-year to Rs2,139.6 crore, from a higher expenditure of Rs2,581.38 crore in FY18. Paytm Mall reduced its expenses across all categories in FY19, but its employee-related expenses went up by 11% year-on-year during the year to Rs177.16 crore.

The company spent the most amount of its money in the ‘other expenses’ category which stood at Rs1,913.52 crore in FY19, which also reduced significantly from around Rs2,214.73 crore in FY18.

Paytm Mall last raised around $160 million from e-commerce major eBay in July this year, for a 5.59% stake in the company. It also received a capital infusion of about Rs2,900 crore ($450 million) from Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. and existing investor Alibaba Group Holding Ltd in four tranches, Mint reported in April 2018.

Since its inception in April 2017, Paytm Mall has raised over $800 million valuing it at over $2.23 billion. It is currently the third-largest e-commerce platform in the country after Flipkart and Amazon India. Paytm Mall was originally inspired by Alibaba’s T-mall in China which runs on an Offline-to-Online model, or O2O model, which is a departure from the traditional inventory-led business.

As a part of the model, the orders are sourced from local brand stores, while the logistics and delivery are hosted by Payt Mall directly. These brands also have their own web pages on Paytm Mall for easy discoverability.