Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway invests $300m in Paytm
Paytm has got $300 million in funding from Warren Buffett’s investment firm Berkshire Hathaway.
“Humbled by this endorsement”
Berkshire joins Ant Financial, SoftBank, Alibaba and SAIF Partners as key shareholders in the company.
Todd Combs, the investment manager at Berkshire Hathaway, has joined Paytm’s board of directors, that also includes Pallavi Shroff and Mark Schwartz as independent directors.
Paytm founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma says the firm is “humbled by this endorsement”.
The competition in India is yet again intensifying with this latest funding.
Last month, Google teamed up with several Indian banks to offer loans and tap into the nation’s gigantic and juicy digital market.
Google rebranded its app as Google Pay and is partnering with four Indian banks, Federal Bank, HDFC, ICICI and Kotak Mahindra – to offer loans to the app’s users.
All of these firms are trying to grab a piece of the market under the “financial inclusion” banner.
In fact, Sharma also notes that the Berkshire investment is going to be a “huge advantage in Paytm’s journey of bringing 500 million Indians to the mainstream economy through financial inclusion”.
In reality, they just want to make money from new mobile and digital users.
