One97 Communications Ltd, which owns digital payments firm Paytm, has terminated its share purchase agreement to acquire 100% of Raheja QBE General Insurance Company as the transaction could not be completed within the agreed time period.
Paytm said it remains bullish on its roadmap for general insurance, "and we intend to seek requisite approvals for a new general insurance licence, wherein we hold a 74 per cent majority shareholding upfront," it said in a regulatory filing.
The digital payments company’s stock traded with gains of more than 2% today around Rs 559.20 per share.
The deal was announced in July 2020. Raheja group company Prism Johnson Ltd then said in a stock exchange filing that it will sell its stake in the insurer to QorQl Pvt. Ltd, a technology company majority-owned by Sharma and Paytm, for Rs 289.68 crore ($38.8 million). In 2020, Paytm gave up its corporate agency licence in exchange for a brokerage licence to enter the insurance sector.
Raheja QBE was set up in 2007. In 2015, QBE Group raised its stake in Raheja QBE to 49% from 26% for Rs 102.9 crore ($15.8 million then). The Mumbai-based company provides personal insurance, business insurance and family insurance services. In May last year, the company said it had appointed Liberty General Insurance’s Pankaj Arora as chief executive and managing director.
Paytm also shared its business operating numbers for April. Paytm's lending business now has an annualized run rate of Rs 20,000 crore. In April, the company disbursed 2.6 million loans through its platform worth Rs 1,657 crore ($221 million). The company also recorded over 100% year-on-year growth in total merchant payments volume, aggregating to Rs 0.95 lakh crore ($12.7 billion). Paytm's monthly transacting users stood at 73.5 million. In the offline payments segment, the company's total device deployment across India has crossed 3 million, it said in a separate filing.
