Paytm merges start-ups Nearbuy, Little Internet

Orchestrating a minor consolidation, fintech giant Paytm has managed to merge deals discovery platforms Nearbuy.com and Little Internet and become the majority shareholder of the merged entity.

The existing shareholders of Nearbuy, including Sequoia India, will also become shareholders of the merged entity. This partnership will further strengthen Paytm’s offerings for offline merchants for acquiring new customers through deals. 

Paytm did not disclose the deal value of the stake buy. The name of the new entity has not been decided yet.

Nearbuy and Little work with over 40,000 small and large merchants across food, beauty, travel and other categories. The combined entity will enable customers to discover deals and save money whenever they step out, and also help merchants effectively utilise inventory and acquire new customers. 

Paytm over a year has made investments for further expansion of its various services. In July, Paytm acquired a majority stake in Insider.in, India’s leading ticketing platform for events and properties, including NH7 Weekender, EDC and The Grub Fest. This stake acquisition enables hundreds of millions of Paytm customers discover a wide selection of events and book instantly.

Last month, the firm bought a stake in CreditMate, a Mumbai-based fintech start-up, which aims at enabling its dealer partners to assess, approve, process and distribute two-wheeler loans to customers with no formal credit history. According to Paytm, a stake buy in the merged entity helps its five million merchants to expand their business and offer its customers to buy digital and physical goods. 

“This combination of Nearbuy and Little marks a great opportunity for us to reinforce our commitment to support small and large retailers in the new age of mobile commerce and payments,” Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and chief executive, Paytm, said.

Backed by Chinese technology giant Alibaba as well as Japanese telecom major SoftBank Group, Paytm since its $1.8-billion funding round from the Masayoshi Son-run company has been on a rapid expansion mode. It is exploring multiple options for increasing the number of points where its mobile wallet and Paytm Payments Bank can get involved in transactions and financial services.

Acquisition of Stake

Little Internet

It is a hyper-local deals discovery platform

It helps customers discover offers at food outlets. It’s also a sales channel for offline merchants

It has 20,000+ merchants

Nearbuy

It is a hyper-local online platform, which provides deals at various food outlets

It is present in 35+ cities, 18+ categories and has over 50,000 merchants across 100,000+ locations