Alibaba is in advanced talks to buy an approximately $500m stake in the parent company of leading Indian mobile payment platform Paytm, marking the Chinese ecommerce group’s first significant foray into the country’s rapidly expanding start-up scene.
Both Alibaba Group Holding’s ecommerce arm and its online payments unit Alipay are set to participate in the transaction, which will conclude later this month, three people familiar with the deal told the Financial Times.
India enjoyed an ecommerce investment boom in 2014, as prominent Silicon Valley-based funds began pouring fresh funds into fast-growing domestic start-ups, such as e-retailer Flipkart and online marketplace Snapdeal, at multibillion-dollar valuations.