After months of rumours and speculations, Paytm has announced that it has acquired a majority stake in an entity formed after the merger of daily deals portal Nearbuy and Little Internet.
According to the sources aware of the development, the combined entity has been valued at around $100 million, after the fund infusion of $25 million from Paytm.
Even after the merger, both the brands will continue to operate independently. The combined entity will now be superheaded by Nearbuy’s chief executive Ankur Warikoo. However, Little Internet founders Manish Chopra and Satish Mani would be moving on.
Ankur Warikoo, founder of the deals platform Nearbuy, said,
In the local commerce space, Little Internet and Nearbuy combined will own 88% of the market share. There are around half-a-million merchants in the organised retail space, which we would like to bring on our platform.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and CEO of Paytm, said,
Paytm’s goal is to provide its base of over five million merchants, tools to expand their business and to offer its customers the opportunity to buy all categories of digital and physical goods.
With this merger, the total merchants’ count on the platform has now reached 40,000. Now, the company is looking to increase that number to 100,000 by the end of 2018.
Now, the Nearbuy and Little Internet platform will also be integrated into the Paytm application, thus users of Paytm will also be able to access deals. The integration of the platform should take about a month or two.
The development comes at a time when Paytm is now focusing more towards offline merchants and helping them scale to get new customers. Recently, the payments platform also acquired a majority stake in events ticketing platform Insider.in.