US-based global ecommerce giant and auction engine eBay has made an investment Paytm Mall, picking up a 5.5% stake. Though there is no official confirmation on the amount, reports suggest that the deal is worth $150 million. eBay gets to appoint its representative as a board observer.

The biggest beneficiary of this deal will be the customers on Paytm Mall who will now be able to choose from over a million unique products sourced internationally and brought in by eBay. These products will be purchased by the 100,000-odd sellers on the Paytm Mall platform and sold to the customers. The US company will continue to operate its Indian ecommerce site, it has been reported. Paytm expects that the business through this eBay connection will account for around 10% to 15% of their overall sales.

Interestingly, eBay has been in and around in the Indian ecommerce scene through the last many years in some form or the other. The company then took a stake in Snapdeal one of the first off-the-block in the ecommerce space promoted by Indian entrepreneurs. That investment only resulted in a loss of $61 million to eBay. The company then took a position in Flipkart. This time Walmart came in and picked up a majority stake in Flipkart, after which it exited, making a whopping $1.1 billion. Now, eBay is trying its luck with Paytm Mall.

The arrangement Paytm Mall has made, to make the international product line work smoothly includes setting up fulfilment centres in South Korea, China and Singapore. These will act as the first mile points of contact for the international sellers and then the logistics partners take over and make the deliveries in India.

The last valuation of Paytm Mall was put at Rs 12,696 crore and the company has managed to raise Rs 1,510 crore in June 2018. The company’s investors, SoftBank of Japan, Alibaba of China and SAIF Partners have stayed with the company.

In terms of the financials, Paytm has clocked a revenue of Rs 774.86 crore and recorded a loss of Rs 1,787.55 crore.