India’s Paytm, a new disruptor in the travelscape, continues to make inroads with the big travel boys, announcing a booking.com partnership.
Under this partnership, all domestic and international accommodations available on booking.com will be available on Paytm, with new offers and promotions, according to a local media report.
This partnership seems obvious and logical seeing that booking.com registered a 70 percent growth in India last year, and expects more of the same this year. India is its largest market after China in Asia Pacific.
“We aim to grow at the same rate this year. India is a fast-growth market and is developing a lot. We continue to increase our partners here, and make investments. We….will open the fourth (office) in Kolkata in the second quarter,” Gillian Tans, CEO of Booking.com was quoted as saying.
Paytm itself is no small player. In 2015, it raised over US$625 million at a valuation of US$1.5 billion, the biggest stakeholder being Alibaba. In August 2016, it received another round of investment from Mountain Capital, one of Taiwan-based MediaTek’s investment funds, which valued Paytm at of over US$5 billion.
As the leading payments gateway, it has access to millions of Indians who are not currently booking travel online but could be encouraged by a simple app. Paytm’s idea is to create 450 million new customers for travel, as reported in Web in Travel.
At the PhocusWright event in New Delhi earlier this month, Abhishek Rajan, Paytm head of travel (on right in photo), announced itself as the new kid on the travel block. “Our strength is lots of traffic,” he said. As the leading payments gateway, it has access to millions of Indians who are not currently booking travel online. Paytm’s idea is to create 450 million new customers for travel.