Paytm may turn profitable this year, CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma said at the Reuters Next conference on Wednesday. With digital payments getting a push because of the pandemic, he said that more merchants began to accept digital payments, and started using Paytm’s platforms. “We could very well break even this year, we will start making money,” he reportedly said.
The company is also going to be investing around $100 million into its financial services arm Paytm Money. According to reports, Vijay said the financial vertical will lead the parent company into operational profitability by FY22.
This came on the same day that the platform began a limited rollout of its Futures and Options (F&O) trading on its platform at a brokerage of Rs 10, along with its other offerings - Stocks, Direct Mutual Funds, ETF, IPO, NPS, and Digital Gold. The company had said this is in line with its intraday charges of Rs 10.
“Initially, the company is giving early access to a select user base on Android and Web to receive their feedback. Commercial roll out to all traders & iOS launch will be over the next few weeks,” Paytm said.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma had said, "On the mission to bring wealth services to 100 million Indians, the launch of F&O will accelerate our path. This has been made keeping the mobile-first platform in mind. The simple to use low price product is meant to make deep inroads into smaller towns and cities."
As part of its announcement, Paytm said that it is aiming for a daily turnover of Rs 1.5 lakh crore and 1 million trades in the next 18 to 24 months, and goes up against players like Zerodha and Upstox.
“We will differentiate in the market based on three factors: our cost of acquiring customers is low due to a trusted brand, we specialize in high volume transaction technology and our pricing, which is half of the industry benchmark,” Varun Sridhar, the CEO of Paytm Money told the Economic Times.