How has Paytm performed in the 2019-20 financial year?

Here are the highlights of Paytm’s financial performance for the fiscal year ended March 2020.

· The company that owns the Paytm brand, One97 Communications, reported revenues of Rs.3629 crore for fiscal 2019-20. However, its losses shrank by 30% to Rs.2942 crore. Total revenues were almost flat despite the pressure of COVID from Jan onwards.

· Paytm managed to reduce its total expenses for the year by 20% from Rs.7730 crore to Rs.6226 crore. During the year, Paytm managed to substantially expand its financial product offerings to include lending, wealth management and insurance.

· The company seeks to become profitable by fiscal year 2022, which is a good achievement for any digital company since profitability normally takes a long time. Paytm got its first big boost from the demonetization of 2016.

· Over the last few years, Paytm has grown from being a unicorn to being a multi-billion dollar company. Its recent placement of shares with Softbank and Ant Financial happened at a valuation of $16 billion.

· Paytm is also in the process of investing in building digital services for its merchant partners to enable them to benefit from technology and financial inclusion. This is also expected to boost profits in the quarters to come.

· Its innovative outsourcing product, Paytm Payouts, has processed Rs.1500 crore in salaries for more than 5,000 MSME units and has sold nearly 200,000 units of its Point of Sale or POS devices in the market. Digital transactions have grown more than 50% YOY.

· Paytm had recently also acquired Raheja QBE Insurance which will also start contributing to profits from this year.