Paytm E-commerce reports net loss of Rs 1,171 crore, revenues jump by 25%

The company is integrating its offline merchant base with international sellers on a single platform in a bid to take on the competition such as Amazon and Flipkart

Paytm E-commerce Private Limited (Paytm Mall) has narrowed the losses in FY19 even as the company expanded the revenue by 25 per cent to Rs 968 crore.

In the period under review, the ecommerce firm owned by Paytm Group reported a net loss of Rs 1,171 crore, which is 34 per cent lower than the last financial year, by bringing in tighter control into its expenses.

According to the company’s filing with RoC accessed by business intelligence platform Tofler, Paytm Mall’s total expenses during the period stood at Rs 2139.6 crore, a decrease of 17 per cent over FY18. This, despite of the fact that employee benefits expenses for the period went up close to 12 per cent at Rs 177.16 crore.

E-commerce companies are facing huge losses in their pursuit to dominate the country’s growing online commerce market which is expected to touch $200 billion by 2028, from about $30 billion last year.

In FY19, Flipkart India Private Limited, the wholesale entity of Walmart-backed homegrown e-commerce firm Flipkart, has widened its losses by 85.91 per cent at Rs 3,836 crore.

Similarly, several of Amazon’s business entities in India including seller services, wholesale, transportation services and digital payments have faced losses in FY19. According to the regulatory documents, combined losses of these entities stood at over Rs 7,000 crore as on March 31, 2019.

A late entrant into the ecommerce space, Paytm Mall is not leaving any stone unturned in its bid to take on giants such as Amazon and Flipkart. In FY20, Paytm Mall is targeting $2.1 billion (Rs 14,900 crore) in gross merchandise value (GMV) for the entire year. During the ongoing festive season, the company is looking at a GMV of at least $300 million (Rs 2,100 crore).

The company is integrating its offline merchant base with international sellers on a single platform which. This is expected to help around 300,000 offline merchants accessing international brands from across the world. The company has also set up an office in China with an aim of sourcing items suitable for the India market.

Paytm Mall has raised a total of $795 million in funding from top investors including SoftBank Vision Fund and Alibaba, according to data platform Crunchbase. This July, US-based e-commerce firm eBay bought a 5.59 per cent stake in Paytm Mall for around $160 million. The deal is expected to give it access to catalogues from the US and Europe.