One97 Communications Limited, which owns the brand Paytm, is investing in artificial intelligence (AI) with an eye on building artificial general intelligence software stack. India’s leading payments and financial services company and the pioneer of QR and mobile payments filed its annual report for 2022-23 with the stock exchanges on Monday, August 21, in which it highlighted its intent to build on AI capabilities and other technologies.
The company’s founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma has also written a letter to shareholders. Sharma spoke about Paytm pioneered mobile payments in India and led mass adoption with innovations like QR Codes and Soundbox.
“In India, we can expect 500 million payment consumers and 100 million merchants not very far in future,” he wrote. In his letter, Sharma mentioned that Paytm’s next contribution for India’s Digital revolution after mobile payments, will be – small mobile credit with high credit quality and fully compliant with the regulators’ guidelines.
“Expectedly this requires sophisticated capabilities in AI and other technologies. I am very proud of our Advanced AI capabilities in use and how we are expanding. We are building an India scale AI system which will help various financial institutes in capturing possible risks and frauds, while also protecting them from new kinds of risks due to advancement in AI,” he wrote.
Paytm announced its April-June quarter results for fiscal 2023-24 (Q1FY24) last month, reporting a consolidated net loss of ₹357 crore, sharply narrowed compared to a loss of ₹6,444 crore in the corresponding period last year. However, the net loss has widened when compared to ₹168 crore reported in the preceding March quarter of fiscal 2022-23.
In terms of top-line front, revenue from operations during the first quarter of current fiscal rose 39.4 per cent to ₹2,341 crore, compared to ₹1,679 crore in the year-ago period. Paytm’s credit distribution business reported a 167 per cent year-on-year growth for the June quarter, disbursing ₹14,845 crore in loan value. The overall number of loans facilitated on the payments platform registered a 51 per cent increase at 1.28 crore, according to a regulatory filing by One97 Communications – Paytm’s parent company, to the stock exchanges.
On August 21, shares of One97 Communications settled 2.54 per cent lower at ₹837.90 apiece on the BSE.