Antfin looks to fully exit Paytm via Rs 3,800 crore share sale
05 Aug 2025, 01:09 PMThis latest divestment plan follows Antfin's previous stake reduction in May 2025, when it sold a 4% holding for Rs 2,103 crore.
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China's Alibaba-owned company Antfin is preparing to divest its entire remaining 5.84% ownership in One 97 Communications, Paytm's parent entity, via a block transaction valued at Rs 3,800 crore, CNBC-TV18 reported.
The transaction is expected to be done at a floor price of Rs 1,020 per share against its closing rate of Rs 1,078.3 on Monday on the BSE.
This latest divestment plan follows Antfin's previous stake reduction in May 2025, when it sold a 4% holding for Rs 2,103 crore. That earlier transaction was completed at a price of Rs 823.10 a share, which was equivalent to a 4% stake in Paytm, and the final price was a 5% discount to Paytm's closing share price then. Goldman Sachs Singapore had acquired 37.25 lakh shares during that sale.
Antfin, the second largest shareholder in One 97 Communications, has been gradually reducing its stake in Paytm as part of regulatory pressures. In August 2023, Ant Group transferred about 44% of its stake in One 97 Communications to founder and chief executive Vijay Shekhar Sharma, a move seen as an effort to reduce the Chinese company’s ownership in the fintech giant.
Resilient Asset Management BV, an overseas entity owned by Sharma, had acquired the ownership and voting rights of 10.3% of the stake in the company held by Antfin (Netherlands), a unit of Ant Group, formerly known as Ant Financial. With this transaction, Sharma became Paytm's largest shareholder.
After the August 2023 transaction, a top Paytm official had told the author of this story at the time that Antfin’s equity in Paytm had been converted into debt in Resilient, and Sharma would pay interest to Antfin on this until maturity. "Vijay has got enough timeline where he can arrange for the money and pay. Antfin is doing a favour on us, and the timeline is in the number of tens of years," the official had said.
This marked one of the major sell-offs in Paytm over the past two years after it had a disastrous listing on the exchanges in 2021. The Noida-based fintech has earlier seen exit of its two investors -- Berkshire Hathaway and SoftBank Group.
Antfin's plans to totally exit Paytm comes as the fintech company reported its first quarterly net profit of Rs 123 crore in April-June period 2025.
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