Paytm in talks to acquire deals platforms Nearbuy and Little

The deal values are not known.
Paytm in talks to acquire deals platforms Nearbuy and Little
Paytm in talks to acquire deals platforms Nearbuy and Little
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Digital payments and ecommerce major Paytm, run by One97 Communications in looking to buy two different deal platforms Nearbuy and Little, reports Mint.

By acquiring Nearbuy, which was earlier Groupon India, and Little Internet, Paytm can boost its presence in the hyperlocal space. Both these deal platforms offer deals across segments like restaurants, salons, movie theatres, vacations and more.

Mint reports that while the deal values being discussed are unknown, both deals may happen at distress prices.

Nearbuy, headquartered in Gurugram has been looking for fresh equity ever since it broke away from its parent Groupon in 2015. After Groupon sold some of its stake in the company to Sequoia as part of an organizational re-shuffle, the company was eventually rebranded to Nearbuy.

Sequoia India spent $0 million for the acquisition. Nearbuy has also raised $. Million in debt from Blacksoil Capital in 2016.

On the other hand, Little is a deals discovery app founded by the founders of Zovi. It raised $50 million from Paytm, SAIF Partners and Tiger Global Management in 2015. Mint also reports that Little had a target of generating annualized gross sales of $170 million but missed it by a big margin

So clearly, both Nearbuy and Little have been struggling to expand.

This acquisition by Paytm comes after it acquired a majority stake in ticketing platform Insider.in. This made it a direct rival to BookMyShow as well, helping Paytm expand beyond just movie tickets. All events on Insider.in will now show up on Paytm.

Paytm now looking to acquire the deal platforms points towards the fact that Paytm is looking to be present in nearly every segment.

From being just a mobile wallet, Paytm expanded from allowing people to pay bills to booking travel tickets, making hotel reservations and now booking tickets for events as well.

It has also expanded into ecommerce with Paytm Mall, which is also seeing major investments by the parent.

It doesn’t stop there. Paytm then launched a payments bank in May this year and also raised a whopping $1.4 billion from SoftBank.

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