MobiKwik targets profits by April 2018; increases offline play

Last week, the company secured funding from South Africa's Net1, which announced that it will infuse $40 million into the company

Gurgaon-based mobile payments network MobiKwik aims to become profitable by April 2018, as it pivots its business strategy to increase presence in the offline space, a senior company official said.

"We expect to become profitable by 2018 and continue to expand financial offerings to help meet this goal," MobiKwik co-founder Upasana Taku told PTI.

"Currently, 25 per cent of our business comes from offline businesses, while 75 per cent is online. In the next few years, we aim to reverse this, with 75 per cent of our business coming from offline," she added.

In this respect, the company has been diversifying into services like micro-lending, mobile payments in brick-and-mortar stores, and most recently, bus ticket booking.

It expects to capture the lead position in the bus tickets booking space by the year-end, Taku said.

"MobiKwik is offering partial payment for ticket reservation and cash pick up for bus tickets booking. We are doing 4,000 bookings a day and target 25,000 daily bus bookings by December 2016," she added.

The payment network is also partnering several non-banking finance companies (NBFCs) to offer micro-loans to users, as well as other offerings like mutual funds.

Further, it plans to collate users' transaction history and draw credit profiles, as it expects to grow user base from 32 million presently to 150 million in two years.

The payments company is looking to onboard 5 lakh offline merchants in the next two years from 1 lakh currently, Taku said.

So far, it has tied up with offline merchants like Big Bazaar, Domino's Pizza, PVR, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Van Heusen and Allen Solly, among others.

Its online merchants include IRCTC, Uber, Meru, Oyo, Zomato, Myntra, ShopClues, MakeMyTrip and Cleartrip.

Last week, MobiKwik secured funding from South Africa's Net1, which announced that it will infuse $40 million (nearly Rs 268 crore) into the company.

In May this year, MobiKwik had raised about Rs 330 crore in funding, led by Japanese payments firm Gateway, Taiwanese chip maker MediaTek and existing investors.

Prior to this, it raised close to $30 million (about Rs 195 crore).

MobiKwik counts Sequoia Capital, Tree Line Asia, American Express, Cisco Investments, GMO Payment Gateway and MediaTek among its investors.