Zomato acquiring Paytm's entertainment ticketing business for Rs 2,048 Cr

Zomato has struck a deal to acquire Paytm's entertainment ticketing business for Rs 2,048 crore. The acquisition includes movie, sports, and event ticketing services offered by Paytm under its subsidiaries, Orbgen Technologies (TicketNew) and Wasteland Entertainment (Insider).

On August 21, both the company’s boards approved the cash transaction.  

One97 Communications, Paytm's parent company, stated that the services will remain accessible on the Paytm app for up to 12 months during the transition period. Post the acquisition, Paytm will focus more on its core payments and financial services distribution. Zomato will incentivise customers to move to the new app called 'District'.

Early this month, Zomato introduced 'District' a new initiative aimed at consolidating its going-out services, such as dining and ticketing for movies and events. In coming up few weeks the app will be available for public use.

This marks Zomato's entry into a broader array of lifestyle services, encompassing dining out, movies, sports ticketing, live performances, shopping, staycations, and more — all within a single platform.

"This is not really an absolutely new business for us as we have already been doing ticketing as a business for more than a year now and have been eyeing building more use-cases for that business. Just to recap, our going-out business (which includes dining-out and event ticketing) did Rs 3,225 crore of GOV (gross order value) in FY24 growing at 136 percent YoY," Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal said.

As a part of the deal, almost 280 employees will transition to Zomato.

"On the people side, this acquisition is our first major acquisition where we are acquiring a team that we do not know very well (in Uber Eats acquisition we did not acquire any team and in Blinkit we knew the founder and team really well). We are betting on the team much more this time and hoping everything works out well. The main driver of success is going to be cultural integration of the new team that will join us – which means assimilation of the new team into our flattish culture," said Goyal.