PAYTM MALL RAISES ₹1,500 CR FROM SOFTBANK AND ALIBABA

BENGALURU: Online retailer Paytm Mall has raised about ₹1,500 crore from Japan’s Softbank Group Corp. and existing investor Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, as part of the ₹3,000 crore funding commitment that was initially announced in April, Paytm Mall said in a filing with the Registrar of Companies.

The third tranche also saw Softbank’s Kabir Misra joining the Paytm Mall board, according to documents sourced from business intelligence platform paper.vc. According to Paytm Mall spokesperson, Michael Evans, president of Alibaba, has also stepped down from the Paytm Mall board.

In April, Paytm’s biggest investor Alibaba, and Japan’s Softbank, together pledged to invest a total of ₹3,000 crore ($450 million) into Paytm Mall. Softbank plans to invest a total of ₹2,600 crore in Paytm Mall, with the rest coming from Alibaba.

The deal values Paytm Mall (Paytm E-commerce Pvt. Ltd), between $1.6 billion and $2 billion, two people close to the development said on condition of anonymity, when the funding was announced.

The development comes soon after Softbank and Tiger Global spearheaded one of the largest sales in e-commerce history— the $16 billion acquisition of Flipkart by Walmart Inc., which was announced last month.