Currently, Paytm has over 2,250 screens for which tickets can be booked online, and the number is likely to go up to 3,000 in the coming months, the company said. Photo: Bloomberg
New Delhi: Payments services and e-commerce firm Paytm on Monday said it is booking 100,000 movie tickets per day, within four months of launching its movie-ticketing segment. It targets to book 10 million tickets per month by the end of the current financial year, the company said in a statement.
One of the key reasons for the significant initial success of Paytm in the movie-ticketing domain has been the pan-India availability of movie screens on its platform. Currently, Paytm has over 2,250 screens for which tickets can be booked online, and the number is likely to go up to 3,000 in the coming months, the company said.
Paytm has tie-ups with PVR, Cinepolis, Inox, Wave, Miraj, MovieTime and Gold Cinemas, apart from other chains and single-screen theatres.
“We are very pleased at the encouraging response to our efforts to serve the millions of movie lovers in India. Paytm will also bring offline single screens on its platform over a period of time. This will take the reach of Paytm deeper and further in this space, and also aid theatre owners in filling up seats,” said Renu Satti, vice-president, Paytm.
Paytm started selling movie tickets on its platform in March and entered into a competition with online ticket booking company Bigtree Entertainment Pvt. Ltd that operates as Bookmyshow.
Bookmyshow is looking to sell 150 million tickets this year which would be an increase of 50% compared with last year,Mint reported in January.
Talking about competition with Bookmyshow, which has had a monopoly in the ticket booking market so far, Satti said that Paytm plans to be synonymous with all online and offline payments and enabling movie ticketing is another step in this direction.
“Our strength lies with our 130 million Paytm wallet users who can now directly book their movie tickets through our wallet. We have already started digital promotions and plan to do more branding soon. We are very upbeat about the entertainment segment of our business and we would be slowly adding more categories to choose from,” she said.
[“Source-Livemint”]
