Some of the other buyouts include Amazon India’s acquisition of online payment gateway services Emvantage Payments Pvt. Ltd, Flipkart Ltd’s acquisition of Unified Payment Interface-based payment app PhonePe, Ola’s acquisition of interbank mobile payment platform Qarth and Shopclues’ acquisition of mobile wallet for offline stores Momoe Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
“Companies from the e-commerce and consumer Internet sector are buying out these (online wallet and payment) companies to ramp up their payment infrastructure, in what is seen as an effort to evolve into a complete ecosystem as part of their service offerings,” Tracxn said in a statement.
Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce firm, has also ventured into fintech through its recent tie-up with Bajaj Finserv Ltd to offer e-commerce purchase loans, said Tracxn, which estimates the Indian retail loan segment would grow at a compound annual growth rate of 18% to reach $830 billion by 2020.
Among the remaining acquisition deals, they were mostly acqui-hirings in the online lending space to improve product offerings and operations. Acqui-hire is when a company acquires another for its employees’ skills.
According to Tracxn, overall funding in fintech has reduced to $512 million across 83 deals in 2016, from a peak of $1.4 billion last year across 80 deals, owing to Paytm Mobile Solutions Pvt. Ltd’s series E round of funding, which accounted for almost 49% of $1.4 billion.
While total funding at the seed stage has year-on-year increased by 12.5% to $27 million, the slowdown in total funding can be attributed to a decline in early and late-stage funding activity.
The report said the average investment ticket size at the series B stage saw a 24% increase at $15.4 million.
Overall in fintech, mobile payment companies and lending companies account for almost 80% of the total funding activity, having raised $212 million and $199 million, so far, respectively.
The most funded companies in fintech include Paytm that has raised $105 million, MobiKwik that has raised $90 million, InCred with $74 million and FINO PayTech Ltd at $38 million funding.
Source: livemint