Paytm Lemonade

Over $80 million in combined funding and two years wasn't enough for Little Internet and Nearbuy, two of India's largest hyperlocal deals companies. Ultimately Paytm had to engineer a face-saving, albeit clever, acquisition. What's next?

Paytm is trying to turn a bad investment into a better one by acquiring Nearbuy and merging it with Little

Considering the vasts sums of money it raised, Little was not able to scale as much as Nearbuy

Couponing startups have an inherent problem. Driven by deep discounts, they end up attracting bargain-hunting customers for merchants

This deal can effectively spell the end for standalone couponing startups

Bad startup investments are par for the course. There’s even a commonly used term for them: lemons. Thus the VC adage, “lemons ripen faster”. Meaning, bad investments tend to become apparent faster than good ones.

Last week, Paytm*, the $7 billion payments and e-commerce giant, figured out a way to get rid of a particularly pesky lemon it had ended up with—Little Internet, a two-year-old hyperlocal deals startup.

In a clever bit of financial engineering (followed by strategic posturing), it engineered a merger between Little Internet and Nearbuy, coincidentally another two-year-old hyperlocal deals startup, and ended up controlling over 50% of the merged entity.

AUTHOR

Arundhati Ramanathan

Arundhati is Bengaluru-based. She is interested in how people use money in the digital age and how new economies will take shape based on that interaction. She has spent over 10 years reporting and writing on various subjects. Previous stints were at Mint, Outlook Business and Reuters.

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