Is demonetisation the end of losses for PayTM?
- Paytm witnessed net loss of ₹1,549 crore in last financial year ending on March 31, 2016.
- After currency ban the company received 700% increase in traffic post demonetisation.
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One of the instant beneficiaries of demonetisation is Paytm that registered record breaking business due to cash crunch. Within two days of PM Modi's announcement Paytm registered a 200% surge in its app download and a 250% hike in its overall transactions.
More recently, this online payment platform also claimed that during its four-day long campaign (December 9-12), it processed more than ₹220 crore sales at its retail partner outlets.
Interestingly, this company witnessed net losses climbing up to four-fold to ₹1,549 crore in last financial year ending on March 31, 2016, as compared to a loss of ₹372 crore in the year before.
This information was disclosed in the documents filed by One97 Communications that runs Paytm at the Registrar of Companies (RoC).
In its filing the company has not mention any reason for suffering the loss and also hasn't mentioned its revenue in the fiscal ending on March 2016.
In the current year, the company has decided to invest majorly on marketing, manpower, and business expansion for ensuring better results in this current financial year.
Paytm heavily relies on its marketing and advertising as compared to other digital payment modes. In fact, post demonetisation it has been running its advertisements in almost all possible media outlets and other channels. Soon after currency ban, their full newspaper page advertisement featuring PM Modi also dragged Paytm in political dark water, but nonetheless the company has claimed to have received 700% increase in traffic post demonetisation.
This Alibaba-backed company is expected to register huge profit in the current fiscal year ending in March 2017 by virtue of being the most popular and widely used e-wallet post demonetisation.
As per the same filing, the company is planning to become operationally profitable by the financial year of 2019 and in this direction Paytm has got a good push due to demonetisation and the cash crunch that followed soon after.
