Alibaba.com Singapore E-commerce Personal Ltd marketed 21.43 million shares of 1 97 Communications, the mum or dad company of Paytm, at 642.74 rupees apiece, in accordance to Friday info from India’s National Stock Trade (NSE). The deal is well worth about 13.77 billion rupees ($167 million), according to CNN calculations.
In January, Alibaba bought about 3% of Paytm for $125 million, chopping its holdings from 6.26%, based on NSE details.
With Friday’s offer, it has bought its whole direct stake in Paytm.
Shares in Just one 97 Communications plunged approximately 8% on Friday. It bounced back again a little on Monday morning. Alibaba and Paytm did not immediately answer to CNN’s request for comment.
‘India’s Alipay’
Founded in 2010, Paytm is India’s premier payment platform, with additional than 300 million registered buyers and around 20 million merchants. It really is backed by significant name traders these kinds of as Ant Group
, an affiliate of Alibaba,
Softbank (SFTBF) and Warrent Buffet’s
Berkshire Hathaway (BRKA).
Alibaba and Ant Team with each other built a “strategic” expenditure in Paytm in September 2015, in an extension of the original investment decision designed by Ant in February of that yr.
At that place, Alibaba said the investment would increase its skill to faucet alternatives in India’s speedy-rising cell commerce current market and digital finance business. Paytm and Ant Group experienced been doing the job on “synergies” due to the fact Ant produced the first expenditure, the enterprise stated.
Ant Team, which operates China’s top electronic payment app Alipay, remains Paytm’s greatest shareholder with a 25% stake, according to the most the latest info from Refinitiv Eikon.
Alibaba has step by step exited its investments in India, right after New Delhi imposed constraints in 2020 that created it tricky for Chinese buyers to commit in Indian companies.
China and India share a disputed border that has very long been the resource of friction amongst New Delhi and Beijing, with tensions escalating sharply in June 2020, when hand-to-hand preventing between the two sides in the Himalayas resulted in the fatalities of at least 20 Indian and 4 Chinese soldiers.
Final December, Indian and Chinese troops clashed once again together the border, which at the time was the initial acknowledged incident amongst the two nuclear-armed Asian powers in almost two several years — though video clip later on emerged suggesting a earlier unreported clash occurred in 2021.
In early 2021, Alibaba marketed a big stake in BigBasket, an online grocery retailer, to Indian conglomerate Tata Team. In May 2022, Alibaba and Ant Group offloaded their overall stake in Paytm Shopping mall, the e-commerce platform of Paytm. In November 2022, Ant Group reportedly offered a stake of about 3% in Zomato for $200 million, in accordance to
Reuters.Alibaba alone has also been below force from domestic regulatory crackdowns and economic headwinds. A govt marketing campaign aimed at reining in the country’s technology giants, coupled with a weak financial system, has sharply slowed sales progress at the company, battered its share value and designed small business enlargement a lot more hard.
Last yr, Alibaba posted flat revenue advancement for the 1st time since going community in 2014.
CNN’s Simone McCarthy contributed to this report.
