India’s largest payment portal, Paytm on Tuesday announced its official acquisition of Delhi-based hotel booking platform NightStay for an undisclosed amount by foraying into the hospitality industry.
Paytm has launched hotel bookings category on its platform. It is in a proposition to invest Rs 500 crore in scaling up its travel operations and partners with 5000 above hotels across the business, budget, and luxury segments. Its partners include Treebo, Sarovar, Sterling, Vresorts, Indian Hotels Co’s Ginger. The company goals to reach 2 million hotels and strive to be Asia’s top hotel-booking platform by 2020.
Previously, the company had been in conversation with NightStay for Rs 142 Crore ($20 Million) in July 2018.
NightStay for last-minute travelers
NightStay is a startup founded in July 2014 by Nasr Khan and Deepak Negi. It is the last minute same-day hotel booking app personalized for last-minute travelers. The startup offers unbelievable prices on luxury and boutique hotels and is available from 12:00 noon till 12:00 midnight.
The company operates in cities like Bengaluru, Goa, Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Delhi. The company raised a total of $500K in funding from Bedrock Ventures and other investors in August 2015.
Madhur Deora, a chief financial officer at Paytm said that
“We want to offer the broadest travel selection on our platform, and look forward to continuing our expansion with the help of our trusted travel partners,”
NightStay founder Nasr Khan will assist the services at Paytm. Paytm officially declares that customers can access to more than 50,000 daily room nights in the hotels on its platform and also work closely with the partner hotels to build robust technology-driven solutions.
Paytm recently entered the food delivery division in collaboration with food tech startup Zomato. It seems to be that the company is looking to invade the smaller markets through the online food ordering business.
Paytm with its bigfoot in various fields is locking horns with the players like MakeMyTrip and Yatra to be the pioneer in the Indian travel industry and is anticipated to reach $48 billion by 2020.
