Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Paytm's parent One97 Communications, has agreed to purchase a 10.3 per cent stake in the fintech firm from Antfin (Netherlands) Holding BV, the company said in a filing on Monday.

The purchase will be made off-market via Sharma's 100 per cent owned Netherlands-based entity Resilient Asset Management BV. After the transaction, Sharma's stake in the company will rise to 19.42 per cent, and Antfin will cease to be the largest shareholder of Paytm.

Paytm shares advanced 3.9 per cent to Rs 797 per share on the BSE in Friday's intra-day deals after the fintech company shares a healthy business update for the month of July, 2023. At 10:14 AM, shares of the company were 2 per cent higher at Rs 783 as against 0.47 per cent gain in the benchmark S&P BSE Sensex.

During the month of July, Paytm catered to 93 million average monthly transacting users (MTU), up 19 per cent year-on-year (YoY) from 78 million MTUs seen in July 2022, on the back of growing consumer engagement on the Paytm Super App.

Shares of One97 Communications (Paytm) hit a 52-week high of Rs 854.90, gaining 2 per cent on the BSE in Wednesday's intra-day trade. In the past six trading days, the stock of the fintech company has rallied 20 per cent after brokerage firm BofA Securities upgraded the stock to 'buy' citing its dominant position in the payment industry. The foreign brokerage firm has upgraded the target to Rs 885 per share.

Shares of Paytm rallied 5.5 per cent to a high of Rs 726 on the BSE as the stock reacted positively to the company's Q4 performance. Paytm had sharply narrowed down its losses in Q4FY23 to Rs 168 crore as against a loss of Rs 763 crore in the corresponding quarter a year ago.

At 09:35 AM, the stock had pared some gains but was still up over 3 per cent at Rs 712. The counter had seen trades of around 45,000 shares as against the two-week average volume of around 1.96 lakh shares on the BSE. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was up 0.7 per cent at 61,498.

Shares of digital financial services firm One97 Communications, which owns Paytm, rallied 5 per cent to Rs 655.30 on the BSE in Monday's intra-day trade amid heavy volumes on report that telecom tycoon Sunil Mittal is eying stake in the company.

In the past two trading days, the stock of the fintech company has surged 8 per cent in an otherwise weak market.

Banking regulator RBI has put a pause on onboarding of online merchants by Paytm Payments Services, even as the company said it will have no material impact on its business, according to a regulatory filing.

One97 Communications (OCL), which owns the Paytm brand, had proposed to transfer the payment aggregator services business undertaken by it to Paytm Payments Services (PPSL) in December 2020 to comply with payment aggregator (PA) guidelines of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) but the banking regulator had rejected its application.

Fintech major Paytm has appointed Anuj Mittal as Vice President, Investor Relations, according to a source close to the developments. Mittal would be reporting directly to Paytm President and Group CFO Madhur Deora.

This comes at a time when Paytm's stock has been pummelled, in line with the fate of many other technology stocks globally. The fintech company's shares were trading at Rs 538 at the time of publishing on Tuesday, losing around three-fourths of the value after a blockbuster initial public offering at Rs 2,150 apiece in November last year.

Shares of One97 Communications, the parent company of digital payments major Paytm, continued to remain under pressure and hit a new low at Rs 550.50, down 3 per cent on the BSE in Tuesday’s intra-day trade on the back of heavy volume.

In the past one month, the stock has tanked 32 per cent owing to persistent negative news flow. In comparison, the S&P BSE Sensex was down marginally by 0.21 per cent during the same period. The stock hit a record high of Rs 1,961.05 on November 18, 2021, in intra-day trade, but failed to touch its issue price post listing.

One97 Communications, the parent company of digital payments major Paytm, dropped out of the 100-most valued companies list on the BSE as the stock price of the company tanked a whopping 20 per cent in the last two trading sessions.

At 10:48 am; with market capitalisation (market cap) of Rs 40,863 crore, Paytm stood at 112th position in overall ranking of the BSE listed companies. The company lost market cap of Rs 60,537 crore since it's listing day. The company had made its market debut on November 18, 2021. It was at the 51th position in overall ranking with market cap of Rs 1.01 trillion.

The collapse in the shares of Paytm following India’s largest initial public offering is proving an expensive lesson for the firm’s early backers.

Paytm shares have tumbled 58% since the stock listed on Nov. 18. That’s cut the valuation of its parent One 97 Communications Ltd. to $7.8 billion from $20 billion.

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