#PayTmIPO – Long Thread:
There is a new game in town. The rules are “well laid out” by VCs – Report just 3 yr financials, blame flat sales since 2019 on covid, pick consultants to project fancy story, price IPO at 45 times sales, create scarcity of “limited offer” of 12% shares”
They say “a fool & his money will always be parted”.
But who rewards mediocrity? Well, enter #PaytmIPO. If Infosys & TCS were a bet on excellence, Paytm is a bet on mediocrity. We’ll see how.
But there is a catch here – Paytm seems to have got the last funding in 2019 at $ 16 Bn valuation. On that, the current pricing at $ 20 Bn seems fair, isn’t it?
Something tells me that the IPO was planned for 2020. But then Covid stuck in March 2020. No IPO happens in a bear market. Oops!
If Paytm doubles from here, it will be bigger than Axis bank & close to Kotak bank.“Super app” bigger than these banks?
Then there is ticketing biz, again trying to compete with the biggies already established in ticketing. We see new segments tried & folded without significant leadership
While industry is worried with too many stocks trading accounts, Paytm has barely started.What leadership execution do we value here?
Look at related party tranx disclosed in DRHP: Paytm pays Rs ~900 Cr revenue to its payment bank, which is owned 51% by promotor VSS. Hmm…okay!
No wonder the small bank & insurance licenses are lying with RBI & IRDA for over a year. Post IPO, “Ant fin” stake will fall <25% but is that good to inspire trust?
330 Mn “users” means 33 Cr people have tried Paytm at some point but haven’t adopted it
Since UPI dominance increased, Paytm is forced to reduce “take rate” it charges merchants (0.64%). Paytm revenues are falling despite rising spends!
More from Ipo
You May Also Like
"I lied about my basic beliefs in order to keep a prestigious job. Now that it will be zero-cost to me, I have a few things to say."
We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.
Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)
It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.
Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
As a dean of a major academic institution, I could not have said this. But I will now. Requiring such statements in applications for appointments and promotions is an affront to academic freedom, and diminishes the true value of diversity, equity of inclusion by trivializing it. https://t.co/NfcI5VLODi
— Jeffrey Flier (@jflier) November 10, 2018
We know that elite institutions like the one Flier was in (partial) charge of rely on irrelevant status markers like private school education, whiteness, legacy, and ability to charm an old white guy at an interview.
Harvard's discriminatory policies are becoming increasingly well known, across the political spectrum (see, e.g., the recent lawsuit on discrimination against East Asian applications.)
It's refreshing to hear a senior administrator admits to personally opposing policies that attempt to remedy these basic flaws. These are flaws that harm his institution's ability to do cutting-edge research and to serve the public.
Harvard is being eclipsed by institutions that have different ideas about how to run a 21st Century institution. Stanford, for one; the UC system; the "public Ivys".
