Paytm Mall's value has dropped by 99.5% to $13 million. Now just so we're on the same page here, this does not mean a catastrophic incident happened at Paytm. Recently, their warehouses did not spontaneously combust.
Since eBay purchased a 5.5% stake in the company in 2019, nobody has actually come up with a newer, more recent, and updated valuation for the company since then. But Paytm has Chinese investors, as well as financial companies like Ant Group and Alibaba. Paytm Mall has sold their 43.32% stake for 42 crore rupees.
Why is Paytm buying back these Chinese investors' stakes?
In order to democratize the Indian E-commerce market, the government of India has started a network for digital commerce. The plan with this platform is to break up the monopoly that American companies like Amazon and Walmart have through Flipkart on India's e-commerce market, which will benefit small traders and kirana owners.
My best description of ONDC is that it's kind of like the UPI for ecommerce. instead of the infrastructure of E-commerce here in India is set up and controlled by companies like Flipkart and Amazon whoever monopoly it's going to be set up and controlled by the government of India, which is going to mean that you can now access sellers from Amazon Flipkart. Meesho and Local Kiranas. The playing field is being leveled here and Paytm mall with pretty much nothing to lose at this point is jumping on board as an early adopter.
So let's see what happens. Let's see if Paytm all can see a resurgence by getting on board ONDC.