Paytm to spend Rs 300 crore to boost movie ticketing biz

In a combat to beat the BookMyShow movie ticketing and events businesses, Paytm is expected to spend about Rs 300 crore this year as it aims to pip the largest player in this space. The SoftBank-backed Paytm, which started the business in 2016 generated gross sales of about Rs 1,500 crore from this category.

Paytm’s CFO Madhur Deora said they were looking to double down on its movie business as it looks to expand the events business. Paytm, since its entry into the category, has been trying to lure users with cashback.

Deora added,  "We will continue to invest in this business as we have aggressive targets for this year and expand our movie ticketing vertical but a significant focus will be to scale up events after we invested in Insider.in.”  We will be incentivising users to boost ticketing sales as they are fighting against an established rival which has been in the market for over a decade. Deora did not name BookMyShow specifically. Majority of Paytm’s business comes from movie ticketing.”

Deora said, “Paytm claims to have about 4,000 screens on its platform out of the 8,000 movie screens operational in India. Going by gross sales, Paytm is likely to have registered revenues of about Rs 150 crore from this business so far since the convenience fee they charge is approximately 10% of ticket value. We clocked about 52 million tickets last year and are hoping to cross 100 million this year with an aim to emerge as market leader.”