"Alipay India", which has more than 300 million users, why was it still sold by Ali?

Recently, the bad critic suddenly heard the news that Ali had liquidated the shares of the Indian company Paytm.

Although it is only a small deal of $300 million, compared with Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard for more than $20 billion, it can only be regarded as a small trouble.

But the company that was sold was anything but simple.

Although it is a local Indian technology company, Paytm has a noble pedigree. Buffett's Berkshire · Hathaway, Son, SoftBank and Ali are his gold masters.

As the world's third largest e-wallet after WeChat and Alipay, although Paytm has more than 300 million users, it is backed by 1.4 billion Indian people, and there is no lack of imagination.

The data also shows that India's digital payment market continues to lead the world with a growth rate of 20%.

Even in 21 years, when Paytm was listed in India, the domestic news press release was still a joy of "Alipay in India listed, Ali became the biggest winner".

As a result, less than two years after the market, "Heart Liver Baby" became "Cow Lady".

Could it be that this time, Ali took the script of "harvesting Indian leeks"?

I looked at Paytm's share price and realized that perhaps Ali couldn't be blamed for being too ruthless. In fact, Paytm has been a bit struggling in recent years.

On November 18, 2021, Paytm shares went public, directly capturing both the largest IPOO in India's history and one of the worst IPO days ever in India.

In the following two years, the stock price plummeted, less than 1/3 of the opening.

Obviously a promising technology company, why did "Great Expectations" and "Les Miserables" come together?

It all starts with Paytm's entrepreneurial history.

In the past 30 years, it has not been particularly difficult to build the Internet in China. After all, as long as you copy some successful American technology companies and do a good job of localization.

And the same theory seems to fit, India.

So back in 2009, someone saw an opportunity and Paytm was founded.

Unfortunately, Paytm, which is very forward-looking, did not have a good life in the first few years of its establishment. Mainly, India is poor, and the gap between rich and poor is particularly pronounced.

This leads to: most people do not have mobile phones, cannot afford computers, and may not even pull the network cable, which is an offline player in the Internet era.

In fact, as of April 2015, fewer than 100 million people in India had access to the Internet.

And rural India is even more exaggerated, many people don't even have bank cards, this is also online payment hammer ah.

So, until 2015, there were 1.2 billion people in India, and Paytm had only 25 million registered users, or only 5%.

Originally, if the whole thing went on, the company might have been dragged down.

Fortunately, India has an unconventional president -- Modi.

Although, as mentioned in our previous article, this prime minister has engaged in a lot of abnormal operations. But in India's story of going to the Internet, he still seems to be a positive character.

In 2015, Modi directly launched the "Digital India" strategy, which stated that the vast rural population can also access the Internet.

Moreover, he turned out to be a doer.

While personally promoting "India", he visited Silicon Valley, met with 3 Indian heads of Google, Microsoft and Adobe, and visited American high-tech giants such as Tesla, Apple, and Facebook.

While engaging in digital infrastructure, so that later in India, the cost of Internet access is extremely low, and the cost of a G is only 1 piece 6 Mao 5 (of course, they are so cheap, don't expect anything from the speed of the Internet), and take the Indian people directly to "run" the Internet era.

As soon as he heard this, the boss of Paytm had to laugh, and Ali also smashed $600 million this year, "real name optimistic".

As a result, this wave of red envelope rain has not yet fallen.

The following year, Modi made a clever move and sent users to Paytm in person.

In order to combat money laundering, cut off the financial chain of terrorist groups, as well as counterfeit money rampant on the market. (It is said that counterfeit money accounted for 1/4 of the entire India at that time)

At 8 p.m. on November 8, 2016, Modi suddenly announced the "demonetization order", 500, 1000 banknotes of large denominations are all invalid (because most Indian businessmen use bribes) and even everyone only has 72 hours to exchange large banknotes at the bank.

Later, it is difficult to say whether the counterfeit money disappeared, but it is said that Modi's wave of operations killed more birds with one stone: not only let everyone apply for bank cards, but also by the way to apply for ID cards and count residents' income.

What a genius for governing the country.

Of course, the main thing is that the Paytm online payment platform is crazy.

First, serious businessmen have turned to more convenient online payment platforms.

Second, the Bank of India, which received hundreds of millions of people in 3 days, directly made everyone queue up for stress. No one understands how happy online payments are better than these people.

As a result, shortly after the "demonetization" came into effect, Paytm announced that the company had set a record for the number of transactions in a single day, the number of app downloads increased by more than a thousand times, and the average number of transactions per person also skyrocketed.

The data shows that its registered users grew from 30 million to 122 million in 4 months.

It's a blessing for God.

In addition, Paytm company, with the technical support of Ali, can be said to be all IQ online, there is nothing to delay, first engaged in big data; Then it focused on financial management needs, sold gold, and the number of users directly became the first financial management app; By the way, I won the license of mobile payment.

It can be said that technology must have technology, capital must have capital, and background must have background.

Originally, with such development, India's first "billion-level application" may have been born, but I never imagined that Paytm met an opponent.

His opponent is UPI (Unified Payment Interface), a technical bridge connecting banks and digital payment companies, similar to the UnionPay system we used before.

Of course, at first, these two were not in competition, or even good brothers.

After all, at the time, you suddenly said to an Indian farmer: Save your money in this app. It is estimated that the vast majority of people will think that you are.

But UPI is different, first of all, this is a banking app, everyone naturally trusts this kind of financial institution.

And first engage in online banking (UPI), then online payment, and then access to Paytm. It seems more logical.

But when overseas companies are also eyeing the Indian market, the question arises: there are so many A pps paid online on the market, why should I use your Paytm?

You know, in order to promote a "cashless society", India's UPI has such a treaty: if you access UPI payment, then you do not need to apply for a prepaid instrument (PPI) license.

As a result, one of Paytm's most important moats, the license is invalidated. As a result, Google, Walmart, Facebook, Samsung Electronics, Xiaomi, Realme and other companies have launched payment applications in India.

It can be said that it is menacing, and these overseas enterprises, that is, they want money and money, and they want technology and technology.

Among them, there are Google, Walmart, two raptors, Paytm The whole person is not good.

You must know that as a payment tool, if the strength of all aspects is similar, then the core battlefield is actually in the payment scenario.

The reason why Alipay is standing, in addition to the payment license, is also thanks to Taobao's invincibility first, so that Alipay comes later.

But in the face of Google and Walmart, Paytm did fail.

First, on the payment tool on the mobile phone, Paytm is not Google's opponent, as long as you have a mobile phone basically can not bypass the Google Store, Google has the power of life and death of the app on the Android phone, and you can add a lot of chaos to Paytm in minutes.

Second, on the payment tools of the personal service side, Wal-Mart controls the most extensive payment channel - supermarkets.

While Paytm has ventured into a number of areas, it has not been able to become a leader in areas other than 'e-wallets'.

The channels of Google and Walmart are stronger and more deadly.

Paytm's first-mover advantage, the channel advantage over Google and Walmart, there is no doubt that it is the famous scene of the Internet: the money-burning war.

This time, though, the scales of victory didn't tip Paytm's side.

In terms of UPI, Walmart, Google have the advantage

But I never expected that before the war was going on outside, Paytm's backyard caught fire first.

With the goal of "Digital India" in front, the Indian government often gives the green light to tech companies, and Paytm is living a "happy life" without shame.

But in the past two years, due to geopolitical reasons, the Indian market has not been peaceful.

First, Xiaomi was once seized billions of yuan, and then Huawei and ZTE were forced out of the 5G network bidding and other incidents.

And Paytm's banking business was once banned from registering new users because of suspected leaks of information to Chinese entities.

This said that good capital has no borders, and you are targeting this big thing, just don't talk about martial virtue.

So from 2020, the market has reported that Ali has temporarily stopped its investment plans in Indian companies and will not invest a penny in India for at least six months.

Subsequently, Ali and Tencent began to reduce their holdings in Indian technology companies.

In May of 22, it was revealed that Ali and Ant Financial were exposed to withdraw from Paytm Mall, the third largest e-commerce platform in India that is engaged in e-commerce wars with Amazon and Walmart.

Without the money that provided ammunition, Paytm Mall's valuation quickly slipped from $3 billion at its peak to $13 million.

This time, the reduction plan has finally arrived, and Ali is at the core of India's investment map and the largest technology company Paytm.

Although this is a small deal of $292 million, Ant Group still holds a 25% stake. But combined with a series of actions by Ali before.

Ali's retreat in India is halfway through.

Without the full support of Alibaba's department, can Paytm, which is mired in a quagmire, escape the joint efforts of Silicon Valley giants?