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One 97 Communications, which owns digital payment statrtup Paytm, has acquired majority stake in insider.in – an online ticketing platform that gives people access to curated lifestyle events. This is according to the statement released by the company. As per the media reports, the entire deal is valued a little over 35 crore.
Insider.in was founded by Shreyas Srinivasan and was until now owned by Only Much Louder (OML) Entertainment Pvt Ltd. After this deal, Srinivasan and OML’s co-founders Vijay and Ajay Nair will continue to remain minority stake holders and also will continue to be part of the company’s advisory team.
Paytm CEO Vijay Sharma reportedly got interested in insider.in, after OML’s founders met him earlier this year. Both held extensive discussions before closing the deal.
Paytm’s bold move to acquire Insider.in isn’t surprising, given that it had ventured into movie and event ticketing space in March last year. This acquisition will apparently help the digital payment company to consolidate its presence in ticketing and lifestyle event space. A space where Bookmyshow.com is pretty much a market leader.
According to Paytm, India’s organised events industry is too huge to give it a miss. It estimates that the entire industry is worth around Rs 4,000 crore, with sporting and live events being the largest contributor to the industry. However, the company claims that online ticketing accounts for only 10% of the overall volume, since customers face lots of problems in discovery of live events.
Interestingly, Paytm has been on a sort of acquisition spree since last year. The Alibaba and Soft Bank acquired two companies last year. The first was consumer behaviour prediction platform Shifu for about $8 million and later acqui-hired e-learning marketplace EduKart for an undisclosed amount.
