Paytm share slump due to volatile market: Vijay Shekhar Sharma

Paytm operator One 97 Communications

Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma said shares were down significantly from the IPO price "against the backdrop of volatile market conditions for high growth stocks globally" in a letter to investors today.

Paytm, whose stock has dived close to 60 percent since its listing in November 2021, today said that it has registered 478 percent growth in loan disbursals for the financial year 2021-22. The value of the over 15,200 loans disbursed in the year amounted to Rs 7,623 crore, a YoY growth of 441 percent.

Paytm share slump due to volatile market: Vijay Shekhar Sharma

In the fourth quarter of FY22, the company disbursed over 65 lakh loans, up from 44 lakh in the previous quarter, a growth of 374 percent. The value of the loans disbursed stood at Rs 3,553 crore.

The Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) for its merchants payments business where it competes with BharatPe saw a growth of 111 percent in the year, rising from Rs 4 lakh crore to Rs 8.52 lakh crore. For the quarter, the company registered a GMV of Rs 2.59 lakh crore, marginally up from Rs 2.50 lakh crore in the previous quarter.

The fintech also said that its super app which serves as a platform to make payments, buy mutual funds, tickets, insurance, etc, is seeing the highest ever monthly transacting users. For the quarter, MTUs grew by 41 percent to 710 lakh from 640 lakh in the previous period.

The company also deploys Point of Sales (PoS) as well as Soundbox machines to help merchants receive payments and get notified for the same. In the quarter, Paytm deployed 29 lakh devices.

“In just 3 years, we have deployed 2.9 million devices in stores and are currently deploying about 1,000 devices per day. Due to the higher engagement that we see with our device merchants, we expect a rise in the number of merchants eligible for loans,” the company said.

Since its listing, the company has been facing questions over its core business strategy and revenue streams. While Paytm is a leader in the Indian wallets landscape, it was asked to stop onboarding new customers in Paytm Payments Bank by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) last month.

Paytm Payments Bank includes the company’s wallets business, however, it can continue to onboard Unified Payments Interface (UPI) customers. The fintech is the third-largest UPI player with a market share of around 16 percent in monthly volumes, far behind leader PhonePe which enjoys a 47 percent share.