Paytm is expected to spend Rs. 300 crores in 2018 in the movie ticketing and events businesses. It aims to fight its immediate rival in this segment, BookMyShow. Paytm started its business in 2016 and generated gross sales of approximately Rs. 1,500 crore from this category.
Paytm’s CFO Madhur Deora said they were looking to double its movie business. Paytm, since its entry into the category, has been trying to lure users with cashback offers.
“We will continue to invest in this business as we have aggressive targets for this year and expand our movie ticketing vertical but a significant focus will be to scale up events after we invested in Insider.in,” said Deora. “We will be incentivising users to boost ticketing sales as they are fighting against an established rival which has been in the market for over a decade.” Deora did not name BookMyShow specifically though it is very evident.
Also Read : Arunachalam Muruganantham, the man who ‘sanitised’ menstrual hygiene for women
Paytm claims to have about 4,000 screens on its platform out of the 8,000 movie screens operational in India. Going by gross sales, Paytm is likely to have registered revenues of about Rs 150 crore from this business so far since the convenience fee they charge is approximately 10% of the ticket value. “We clocked about 52 million tickets last year and are hoping to cross 100 million this year with an aim to emerge as market leader,” said Deora.