Ratan Tata invests in Paytm, joins as adviser

Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of the salt-to-software conglomerate Tata Group, has joined mobile commerce company Paytm as an adviser, and made a minority investment in it in his personal capacity, in yet another show of his bullishness on India’s fast-growing e-commerce market.

Ratan Tata, chairman emeritus of the salt-to-software conglomerate Tata Group, has joined mobile commerce company Paytm as an adviser, and made a minority investment in it in his personal capacity, in yet another show of his bullishness on India’s fast-growing e-commerce market. The investment amount remains undisclosed.

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Tata has earlier invested in e-commerce companies such as Snapdeal, Urban Ladder, Bluestone and auto portal Car Dekho.

The investment comes after Ant Financial Services Group, an affiliate of China’s e-commerce firm Alibaba, last month picked up 25% stake in Vijay Shekhar Sharma-led One97 Communications, which owns Paytm.

“I am very happy that Tata has put faith and trust in our values and mission. There is no better advisor for Paytm on building India’s most-trusted mobile payment platform,” Sharma said in a statement.

Paytm currently has 25 million active mobile wallets and wants to scale it up to 100 million by this year-end. “We are now doing $1 billion gross merchandise value from mobile app. This year’s target is $4 billion GMV,” it added.

Gross merchandise value is the sales price the company charges the customer, multiplied by number of the items sold.