Paytm to foray into hospitality sector with the acquisition of Last Minute hotel booking startup NightStay

Paytm is looking to acquire the last minute hotel booking app, NightStay for $20 million. This development has been confirmed by the NightStay founder Nasr Khan but Paytm has not confirmed the move yet.

NightStay was started in December 2014 with a basic alpha app. Its beta version was launched in March 2015. The idea behind the startup was to build a platform that could provide instant hotel bookings for travelers while maintaining the quality of service and hygiene.

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It offers a range of hotels and a flexible option to provide flash accessibility on the app. Hotels can make their inventory available on the app which is available from 12 noon to midnight and this would help them increase their footfall while maintaining their brand identity. It is currently present in Delhi, Goa, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Chennai and Hyderabad. NightStay raised a funding of $500k in August 2015 from BedRock Ventures and angel investors Rajesh Sawhney of GSF and Sailesh Vickram Singh who is a partner at SeedFund.

This acquisition signals the digital payment company’s foray into the hospitality space. This move is a step ahead in the direction for Paytm. There were also reports back in September 2017 that the company was looking to acquire the travel startup via.com. Paytm is expanding its portfolio with diverse products and servcies. It acquired the Chennai based online ticketing platform TicketNew in May in order to boost its entertainment arm.

It also invested $8.95 million in Entertainment Arm which gave the users access to free in app content across different categories like Cricket, Games and Entertainment Videos. Paytm is currently betting on new sectors to generate revenue. Its entertainment arm has increased the online penetration in India by more than 50% and has scaled the ticketing business to 660 cities. It claimed to have achieved a 5 times growth in the online ticket sales in February 2017 by selling 52 million event and movie tickets. The senior vice president and chief financial officer, Madhur Deora stated that the company contributed 25%-30% towards the opening weekend box office collection of the big movies released in the country. The company also acquired a major stake in insider.in in July 2017. insider.in is a ticketing platform which helped Paytm tap into the rapidly growing live entertainment space in the country. Other in their portfolio include Nearbuy, Little, Cube26 and m’loyal.