Zomato to Buy Paytm Entertainment Ticketing Business for More than Rs 2,000 Crore

Zomato, which provides food delivery service through the app, has said that it will buy the movie and events ticketing business of digital payments company Paytm for $ 244.2 million (about Rs 2,049). Zomato plans to expand its ticketing business. This will increase Zomato’s presence in the online ticketing market for movies and live events. Reliance invested BookMyShow has a major stake in this market.

For the past few years, BookMyShow has been facing tough competition from Paytm’s ticketing platform. zomato It expects this acquisition to increase the gross order value of its non-core business by three to four times in the next two years. Last year, the share of restaurant table booking services and events organizing and ticketing units in Zomato’s total revenue was about two percent. However, it is one of the fastest growing segments of the company.

Under the agreement between the two companies, ticketing services will be provided from Paytm’s platform for 12 months before the business is completely shifted to Zomato’s recently launched ‘District’ mobile application. Along with this, about 280 workers of Paytm’s entertainment ticketing business will also be included in Zomato. Paytm had acquired Insider and TicketNew for about Rs 2.68 billion a few years ago to expand the ticketing business. However, Paytm is exiting these segments to focus on its core business of payments and financial services.

Earlier this year, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had ordered the closure of Paytm’s banking unit Paytm Payments Bank Limited (PPBL). This was a big blow to Paytm. Since then there was a big fall in the company’s shares. In the fourth quarter of the last financial year, the revenue of One 97 Communications, which runs Paytm, had declined by 2.6 percent for the first time since its listing. The company’s revenue was approximately $22.7 billion. The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) had imposed a penalty of over Rs 5 crore on PPBL in March. The reason for this was violations in reporting illegal amounts sent through PPBL accounts.