Airtel's Sunil Mittal seeks to buy stake in Paytm: Report

Sunil Bharti Mittal, the chairperson of India's second-largest telco Airtel, is seeking to buy a stake in Paytm by merging his financial services unit into the fintech giant's payments bank, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

Mittal is seeking to merge Airtel Payments Bank into Paytm Payments Bank in a stocks deal and is also seeking to buy Paytm shares from other holders, the report said citing sources who also said that the talks were in the early stages and Airtel and Paytm may not reach a deal.

Shares of Paytm's parent One 97 Communications Ltd, which went public in November 2021, slumped over 70 per cent last year from the issue price. But recently it rebounded on reports that the company may turn profitable.  

The fintech firm narrowed its consolidated loss by nearly 50 per cent to Rs 392 crore in the quarter ended December 31, 2022 as against a loss of Rs 778.5 crore in the year-ago period. The company's revenue from operations rose 42 per cent to Rs 2,062 crore in Q3FY23 as against Rs 1,456 crore in the same quarter last year.

According to Bloomberg, a representative for Paytm said that the company remains fully focused on its "strong organic growth journey and is not involved in any such discussions".

Airtel Payments Bank was launched in January 2017 to support what it called the "cashless revolution" promised by the Government of India. Paytm Payments Bank, too, was launched in the same year.

The fintech firm claims to have over 100 million KYC customers. "With over 300 million wallets and 60 million bank accounts, we are driving financial inclusion in India," it writes on its site.

Airtel Payments Bank was granted the scheduled bank status by the Reserve Bank of India in January last year.