Zomato acquires entertainment ticketing business from Paytm
Zomato on Wednesday announced that it will acquire the movie and event ticketing business of digital payments company Paytm for $244.2 million (approximately Rs 2,049 crore), in a deal that the food delivery platform aims to bolster its fast-growing ticketing business.
The acquisition strengthens Zomato’s presence in the Indian online movie and live event ticketing market, which is currently dominated by Reliance-backed BookMyShow.
Paytm, BookMyShow’s biggest competitor since 2017, is set to transfer its market share to Zomato by selling its ‘ticketnew’ platform that sells movie tickets and ‘Insider’ platform that sells tickets to live events.
Zomato expects the acquisition to more than triple gross order value at its non-core businesses over the next two years, the company said in a letter to shareholders.
Non-core businesses, such as restaurant reservation services and an event management and ticketing arm, accounted for just 2 percent of Zomato’s total revenue last year, but they were the fastest-growing segments.
Zomato started selling tickets over a year ago.
As part of the agreement, Paytm’s platforms would continue to offer ticketing services for another 12 months, before completely switching over to Zomato’s recently launched mobile application ‘District’.
Additionally, Zomato will acquire around 280 employees from Paytm’s entertainment ticketing division.
Paytm built its movie ticketing business in-house, acquiring Insider and TicketNew for Rs 2.68 billion between 2017 and 2018.
However, the company is now exiting these businesses to focus on its core payments and financial services businesses, following an order from India’s central bank in January to wind down its banking division.
© Thomson Reuters 2024
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