On Wednesday, August 21, Zomato announced its decision to acquire the movie and events ticketing businesses of digital payments company Paytm for a total of ₹2,048 crore ($244.2 million). This acquisition is part of Zomato’s strategy to diversify its operations beyond food delivery.
The deal strengthens Zomato’s position in India’s extensive online ticketing market for movies and live events, a space currently dominated by Reliance-backed BookMyShow.
Paytm, which has been the closest competitor to BookMyShow since 2017, will transfer its market share to Zomato by selling its ‘TicketNew’ platform, which handles movie ticket sales, and its ‘Insider’ platform, which manages ticketing for live events.
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Paytm originally built its movie ticketing business internally and later expanded by acquiring Insider and TicketNew for ₹268 billion between 2017 and 2018. However, the company is now divesting these businesses to concentrate on its core payments and financial services operations, following a directive from the RBI in February to wind down its banking unit.
For Zomato, this acquisition is in line with its goal of expanding into non-core businesses, such as restaurant table booking services and event organization and ticketing. These segments, which made up 2% of Zomato’s total revenue last year, have been the company’s fastest-growing areas.
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