Paytm, one of the most popular payment app of the country announced that it has acquired Orbgen Technologies Private Limited, the organization which runs Chennai based online ticketing platform TicketNew. TicketNew is a Chennai based online ticketing website founded in 2007 by Ramkumar Nammalvar. The website has gained popularity over time and now had claimed to be accessed easily from 300 cities across India by July, 2017. It also claims to have a huge network chain across various urban and rural areas.
Paytm entered into this entertainment and events ticketing business sometime in March 2016. By July 2017, Paytm had taken over the majority of stakes of the online ticketing and events platform and also claims to have sold about a million tickets for over 8000 events.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the Founder and CEO of Paytm said in a recent interview, “ In the entertainment category we are nearly the market leader. So, at an industrial point of view, I feel that all these platforms will grow further. These were by-product businesses earlier but are now becoming huge.”
According to an official statement released by Paytm, their entertainment business in India has peaked by over 50% and now covers various categories of events like sports, music, comedy and others.
TicketNew has a very strong regional presence in South India which led Paytm to make the offer. Paytm also said that about 355 of its overall sales last year was from regional movies and content. Paytm took over majority of the stakes from Alibaba Pictures of China earlier and hence has to cater to an extra 300 million customers.
Paytm has also claimed about 500% growth from 2016 and that it had sold over 52 million movie and event tickets, provided ticketing in an online basis for 4000 movie screens, 1600 of them were from regional movies.
Noida- headquartered Paytm had also launched Movie Pass subscription, a great offer for regular moviegoers on every weekend. It had also promised 100% refund on cancellations.
Book My Show is the biggest competitor of Paytm at present as it has also penetrated to various spheres apart from movie ticketing and music being the latest. This growth has happened majorly after funding from Stripes group and recently commands 78% of market share. So far, there is a lot of work still left for Paytm to gain supremacy all over and be the real market leader.
Terry Ts 
Rudhra Nandu