Paytm’s parent One 97 Communications has infused Rs 61 crore in its entertainment and ticket booking arm Paytm Entertainment, reports Inc42. The portal found about the development in the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) documents of the company.
To up its game in entertainment ticketing, Paytm had acquired Chennai-based online ticketing platform TicketNew for $40 million in May this year. At the time of acquisition. Paytm’s CFO Madhur Deora had said that the company is on a mission to be the one-stop destination for all movie and entertainment ticketing needs.
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. Paytm had earlier said that it sold about 52 million tickets in the last 12 months.
In July 2017, Paytm acquired a majority stake in www.insider.in for Rs 35 crore, 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.
Movie Ticketing space
Paytm is mounting a serious challenge against online ticket booking portal BookMyShow (BMS) for dominance in the entertainment ticketing space. Last month, BMS appointed Albert Almeida as the COO of their non-movies vertical, as a part of a company-wide pivot towards events as a major source of business. Big Tree Entertainment, which owns BookMyShow, and also runs theatrical revenue tracking firm Rentrak, made a little over ₹300 crore in the 2017–18 financial year, a 27% increase from the previous year. Anonymous experts cited by the Economic Times estimated that BookMyShow sells around ten million tickets a month.
