Digital payments platform PayTM has reported a net loss of Rs 1,549 crore for financial year 2015-16, up from Rs 372 crore losses a year ago as the company continues to provide cashbacks and discounts as part of its marketing strategy.
The Noida-based One97 Communications, the parent company of PayTM, had reported a profit of over Rs 5 crore during the financial year ended March 2014.
According to documents filed with the Registrar of Companies (RoC), Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma drew an annual salary of about Rs 3.1 crore in the 2015-16 fiscal compared to Rs 2.3 crore the year before.
PayTM, which is backed by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, did not mention the revenues for fiscal ended March 2016 and has not listed the reason for its increasing losses.
The company had reported a revenue of Rs 336 crore in 2014-15, as against Rs 210 crore in FY 2013-14.
The company in its filing has stated that it plans to become operationally profitable by financial year 2019, according to a valuation paper commissioned by Paytm and prepared by Deloitte Haskins and Sells, the Times of India reported.
Paytm is one of the biggest spenders on marketing and advertising in the digital payments space and has pushed it further following the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1000. The company has reported many-fold hike in its business after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the decision to scrap high value currency notes on November8.
Lat week, it was reported that Vijay Shekhar Sharma has sold one per cent of his shares in One97 Communications to its shareholders for about Rs 325 crore.
The amount raised will be utilised for Paytm's proposed payments bank operations, in which Sharma holds 51 percent stake.
At the end of March this year, Sharma held over 21 percent stake in One97 Communications. The latest sale would bring down his holding to over 20 percent.
Last year, the Reserve Bank of India had awarded 'in-principle' approval to Sharma, the founder of One97 Communications, to set up a payments bank.
Paytm payments bank is in the process of securing the final licence from RBI and will commence its operations after due approvals.
Alibaba Group and its affiliate Ant Financial hold over 40 percent in One97 Communications. They had pumped in USD 680 million last year into the parent company of Paytm. However, the Chinese entity will not have a direct shareholding in the payments bank.
