It was always a necessity to carry your hard cash money wherever you went, be it shopping, traveling, playing, and others. But the digital era of smartphones has fixed it all by empowering the user with various forms of digital payment options. The smart and secure form of digital currency has eliminated the worries of handling your cash and has made it conveniently accessible to you wherever you need.
Paytm is one of the Indian startup working in this direction. This platform has made digital financial transactions seamlessly effortless. It is a one-stop portal for all your regular payment needs of electricity, recharge, taxes, shopping, booking travel tickets, events, and many more. It has entirely changed the mode of financial transactions of many offline business stores with an unmatched convenience and benefits.
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Foundation
Paytm was founded in August 2010, by an alma mater of Delhi Technical University (DTU), Vijay Shekhar Sharma and the headquarter is situated at Noida, India. Vijay Shekhar Sharma was born in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh on 8 July 1978. He is a tech enthusiast, he built a website during his college days named, indiasite.net and sold that at a price of $US 1 million. He later went on to become the youngest billionaire of India.
Fundings
Paytm is mostly backed by the parent organization, One97 Communication and has received a funding of ₹2.2 billion. Apart from it, Paytm has also received financial assistance from Alibaba group in March 2015, Mountain Capital in August 2016, and SoftBank in May 2017, which brought the company’s valuation to $US 10 billion.
Products and Services
Paytm Mall started as an online recharge portal for DTH and prepared mobile and later added other options for a data card, postpaid mobile, and landline bill payment. Currently, it runs an e-commerce store along with the mobile application of its own and products of almost all kinds area available like electronics, Fashion store, mobiles and tablets, and others. It has expanded its recharge facilities to cableTv, electricity bills, domestic gas, and others. Paytm also provides facilities for booking railway, bus, and flight tickets. It also launched movies, events, and amusement parks ticketing.
Paytm wallet is one of the finest products in India which powers all the transaction through Paytm. This can be linked with your bank account and transfer cash without any charges. It has a very simplified operability.
Paytm bank is a feature available in the Paytm app, wherein the user can link his bank account and make payments directly through the app. The users are also provided with an annual interest of nearly 6.85% on fixed deposits.
Automated tax payment options are also available where the user can pay their taxes through the Paytm app.
Paytm payment gateway provides facility to merchants for collecting payments through this gateway through UPI transactions, debit card, credit card, and others. it can be linked with web and mobile applications.
Statistics
Let’s have a look at some of the stats of Paytm:
- There are over 300 Million registered user of Paytm app.
- Over 5 Million daily transactions are carried out through the app.
- Over 7 Million online Paytm merchants and 850,000 offline merchants.
Competition
Paytm has a large user base, which enabled its growth and leads on to become India’s largest mobile commerce platform. There are some competitors too in this space like Freecharge, who also provides recharging services. Airtel Money, Mobikwik, Oxigen wallet, and jioMoney provides e-wallet services. PayUmoney and Instamojo are competing for the payment gateway business.