Paytm's GMV hit Rs 1,469bn in Q4FY21 - 100% growth in one year

India's leading digital payments and financial services platform Paytm has filed for a Rs 16,600 crore IPO, which is touted to be India's largest market debut.

The company filed its Draft Red Herring Prospectus on Friday, which gave insights into how the most well known brand in financial services is growing.

One of the factors that stood out was Paytm's Gross Merchant Volume is growing at a phenomenal rate, over a 100% growth in just one year. In Q1FY22, Paytm's GMV hit Rs 1,469 billion in Q1FY22, which was Rs 697 billion in the first quarter of FY21. In the whole of FY21, Paytm's GMV stood at Rs 4,033 billion - highest in the payments industry as per Redseer.

In its DRHP, the company defines GMV as "the rupee value of total payments made to merchants through transactions on our app, through Paytm Payment Instruments or through our payment solutions, over a period. It excludes any consumer-to-consumer payment service such as money transfers".

While the company saw an initial dip last year due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it quickly recovered and began to perform much better, beating its own record from the previous years. "Since lockdowns eased in India in the second quarter of FY 2021, our GMV has increased consistently for the rest of FY 2021 primarily due to an increase in the transactions of our online and in-store merchants. Even during the first quarter of FY 2022, which was impacted by the second wave of COVID-19, we saw continued growth in GMV," the company said in its DRHP.

The company's focus remains on consumer to merchant transactions for growth, as per its DRHP. In fact, the company's GMV per MTU (Monthly Transacting User) has even exceeded pre-COVID levels - hitting Rs 9719 in Q1FY22 as compared to Rs 6,959 in Q3FY20.

The growth has come in with Paytm's focus on building revenue focussed business models. This has resulted in a spike in its merchant base despite the COVID-19 pandemic, which has grown from 11.2 million in FY19 to 16.3 million in FY20 to 21.1 million in FY21.

As per its DRHP, these are Paytm's top offerings for merchants "(i) a full suite of payment services, and (ii) technology solutions to grow their businesses and our share of their payments."