The giant online payment platform Paytm will start preparations for an initial public offering (IPO) in the next 22-24 months. The announcement has been made by founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, at the HT-Mint Asia Leadership Summit in Singapore on Friday. The Indian e-commerce company last disclosed raising $300 million from Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway in 2018. Its valuation has skyrocketed to $15 billion, Sharma recently told Media.
One97 Communications, Paytm’s parent company is India’s most valuable unicorn, or privately held startup with a valuation of $1 billion or more. Its backers include Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Vision Fund, and Alibaba Group’s Ant Financial.
Sharma noted that while a public listing is ‘inevitable’, it has yet to construct a roadmap for it because he wants the firm to generate more cash before entering the public market.
According to Venture Intelligence, Indian startups raised a record $3.9 billion from VCs in the first half of the calendar year 2019. The figure surpasses the full-year figure for 2016 and 2017, indicating a surge in investor confidence, buoyed by post-election optimism and Flipkart’s $16-billion exit to Walmart last year.
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