One97 Communications – The Skinny

One97 Communications - The Skinny
Indian digital goods purveyor One97 is among the list of unicorn companies – that's companies that have a value of greater than a billion USD

Indian digital goods purveyor One97 is among the list of unicorn companies – that’s companies that have a value of greater than a billion USD). They earned this title three years ago and are now valued at $10 billion in net worth. What we wanted to know is what made them that way and how they stayed that way, so we took a closer look at their business information to try and find out.

Digital Goods

One97 Communications LTD

One97 is one of those companies that arose out of a demand for a main product so great that the firm had to allow it its own brand. One97 is actually a derivative of parent company Payment, a private E-commerce firm founded by Vijay Shekhar Sharma in 2010. With online shopping, payment processing and the maintenance of E-wallets as their primary focus One97 have done incredibly well as one of the tech companies founded after the rise of the digital era.

Facilities

As it currently stand around 7 million Indian merchants use this app and its main competitor is PayPal; who once tried to sue them for having a fairly similar logo. One97 operates across various sectors of industry and have deals with many payment facilities, allowing users to purchase tickets, restaurant bills, pay for their education or their shopping all in one place. Although the company was invested in heavily by its founder to begin with, it wasn’t until Uber started offering PayM as a payment option that the company truly took off. After this happened in 2014 One97 experienced an unprecedented rise in custom, with new users downloading the app simply to make their ride experience easier.

Initial funding came from Venture Capital, SAIF Partners, Sapphire Ventures and Fintech Intel Capital along the way, they have also made some themselves – owning a $5 million share in Jugnoo (the rickshaw company), Loginest and XpressBees. Paytm are also heavily invested in healthcare startups, research and development of their technology and security of their features. They also run their own online mall, have a function that allow for automated tax processes and have won awards for their high productivity.

List of Services

As well as being the top Indian merchant service One97 has a few more specific services:

  • Paytm Mall is an app that allows customers to shop directly form sellers using the service.
  • Integrated tax payments to save merchants time, effort and money.
  • Partm Payments Bank is their officially licensed banking system.
  • Huge investments in healthcare startups, rickshaw services and PlusTxt.
  • Paytm Gold Savings Plan is for high earners.
  • Paytm Money is their straight product.
  • Paytm Gold Gifting allows users to save long term.
  • Paytm Wallet – their E-wallet service.

With a wide range of products that cater to both ends of the market and the ability to charge merchants for their software over time One97 has a set income that will continue to grow as they take on more clients. It remains to be seen how well they will do outside of India, where they will come up with tough competition in the form of their old adversary: PayPal.

Online Client

Further Information

If you need to know more about One97 you can read all about them by following this link to their website.