Paytm has acquired Orbgen Technologies Private Limited, the entity that operates TicketNew, a Chennai-based online ticketing platform. Various media reports suggests that the deal is valued at $40 million. Paytm's CFO Madhur Deora said that the company is on a mission to be the one-stop destination for all movie and entertainment ticketing needs. Both Paytm and Orbgen are Alibaba group backed companies. Note that in June 2017, Alibaba Pictures Group Limited acquired a majority stake in TicketNew with a plan to invest somewhere around Rs 120 crore over a period of time. At that time, we had pointed out that Alibaba’s investee Paytm is aggressively pursuing growth in the online ticketing business and had asked, why would Alibaba invest in a potential competitor in the space? Now that Alibaba Group has brought Ticketnew under Paytm, the investment at that time makes sense. In July 2017, Paytm acquired a majority stake in www.insider.in for Rs 35crore., an events ticketing platform, to address the rapidly growing live entertainment space in India. Paytm and Insider’s events platform now sell event tickets across music, sports, comedy and other lifestyle categories. Paytm vs BookMyShow Paytm is mounting a serious challenge against online ticket booking portal BookMyShow (BMS) for dominance in the entertainment ticketing space. Paytm Entertainment entered the events ticketing space in March 2016 and since then it claims to have ticketing partner for over 4,000 screens in 675 cities. While BMS is present for 4,500 screens across 650 towns in India. Paytm said in a statement that it sold over 52 million…
