India’s leading online payments platform Paytm is reportedly in talks to acquire online travel portal Via.com. This move hints that the company is now looking to boost its travel business.
As per the reports, the company has held preliminary discussions but no term-sheet has been signed yet. People aware of the matter suggests that Via.com could be valued at up to ₹513 crore ($80 million).
This development comes just a day after it was announced that Google Flights, Google’s meta flight-search application, has partnered with travel ticketing platform Cleartrip to expand its presence in India.
A person aware of the development says that Paytm had held talks with Cleartrip for acquiring the platform, however, the talks fell through. He said,
Paytm has been talking to multiple players but the discussions with Via.com is in an advanced stage. Unlike others, Via has a strong business that comes from offline users, especially in non-metro cities which Paytm is keen to tap.
Via.com, based in Bengaluru, is backed by venture capital investors including IndoUS Venture Partners and Sequoia Capital. The company has so far raised around ₹96 crore ($15 million) in funding.
The online travel portal was founded in 2007. At that time, the company was known as FlightRaja but it later rebranded as Via. The company now has 100,000 active travel partners across 2,600 towns and cities, and covers more than 13,000 pin codes across Asia.
Paytm claims that its travel business has crossed annualised gross merchandise volume (GMV) of ₹3,209 crore ($500 million) in January, driven by bookings of two million tickets that month. It has now projected annualised GMV of $2 billion for its travel business by March.
It seems that ever since Paytm raised a massive funding round of about ₹9,000 crore from SoftBank earlier this year, it has been on an expansion spree. The company said that it plans to invest over ₹10,000 crores in next 2 years to bring over 50 crore users to its platform.
Till now, Paytm was focused on expanding its eCommerce business and is now all geared with a plan in place for the upcoming festive season sales. It has spent money on on-boarding new merchants, improving its logistics services and for marketing and promotions of the sale, along with offering cashback to users.
Now, the company seems to have shifted its focus towards other segments. While it is planning to boost online travel vertical, the company is also reportedly in talks with two deal platforms — Nearbuy and Little, for acquisition. However, nothing seems to have materialized as of today. Paytm recently acquired stake in Insider.in to boost its ticketing business.