Paytm earns USD500 million from travel business

 Online payments and ecommerce marketplace Paytm has said that its annualised GMV from its travel vertical has crossed USD500 million (Rs 3,342 crore approximately).

The platform saw over 10-million tickets across bus, train and air travel booked on the platform. The marketplace had launched air ticket booking in June 2016, followed by train reservations. The company had reported bookings of over 1-million tickets in September 2016.

The company had announced that it would be investing Rs 300 crore in the vertical to grow the business. The company is also eyeing revenues generated from hotel bookings offering coupons and discounts to users.

"We are encouraged by the positive response to our foray into the travel business, particularly in the train and air ticket segments which were launched only towards the end of 2016. This year we plan to further accelerate our growth and firmly establish ourselves as a dominant player in the online travel market,“ said Abhishek Rajan, vice-president at Paytm.

The company plans on growing the business four-fold by December 2017. The online travel sector saw consolidation in 2016 as major players like MakeMyTrip and Yatra took different routes to streamline their business. Ticketing is considered a low margin business while selling holiday packages and hotel bookings are the major revenue sources for the sector.

For Nasdaq-listed travel Make MyTrip, gross bookings in FY 2015 16 totaled $1.85 billion, before merging its business with South African media conglomerate Naspers backed ibibo in October. Yatra Online, which started trading on Nasdaq after a reverse merger last year, registered gross bookings of $897 million in fiscal 2016.

Paytm plans to hire 100 employees across technology, business and operations at its Bengaluru office to power the travel vertical, said the company in a statement.