As part of this listing on the Bombay Stock Exchange, Paytm will issue 83 billion rupees ($ 1.1 billion) of new shares.

And current shareholders will sell 100 billion rupees ($ 1.34 billion) worth of securities, according to the prospectus filed with Indian regulators.

Paytm will issue new securities in a price range of Rs 2,080 to Rs 2,150 per security as part of the offering, which begins Monday and ends Wednesday.

That is expected to make Paytm India's most valued tech company at $ 20 billion, up sharply from $ 16 billion at its last valuation in November 2019.

Coal India holds the record

By hitting the $ 2.46 billion target, Paytm would break the record of $ 2 billion held by Coal India in 2010, India's largest IPO of all time periods.

Paytm has already raised 82.35 billion rupees ($ 1.1 billion) last week from 74 key investors, including the Blackrock Fund and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

Meal delivery giant Zomato, another tech startup, has had the biggest IPO this year in India so far, with a $ 1.3 billion issue of securities in July.

Paytm is backed by Chinese tycoon Jack Ma's Ant and Alibaba groups, which together hold nearly 35 percent of the company's shares.

For his part, the Japanese Masayoshi Son holds 18.3% through his Softbank Vision fund.

Warren Buffett's Elevation Capital and Berkshire Hathaway are also among the major investors in Paytm.

Self-made billionaire Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder and CEO of the company he founded at the age of 32, which has a net worth of $ 2.4 billion according to Forbes, owns nearly 14% of shares.

From its launch in 2010, Paytm quickly became synonymous with digital payments in a country traditionally dominated by cash transactions.

The company has benefited from the government's efforts to curb cash transactions - including the demonetization of almost all banknotes in 2016 - but also, the coronavirus pandemic.

The Bombay Stock Exchange, September 24, 2021 Punishes PARANJPE AFP / Archives

"I started using Paytm just before confinement," Naina Thakur, owner of a grocery store, told AFP.

"I didn't know the coronavirus was coming but Paytm was very helpful to me during the pandemic."

Ms Thakur said more than 30% of her customers buy her groceries from her through Paytm.

“It's much easier than a wire transfer because they only need my cell phone number to pay and I get the payment within seven hours,” she says.

337 million customers

Ms Thakur is among some 22 million Indian traders, taxi and rickshaw drivers and other vendors who accept payments ranging from 10 rupees (13 euro cents) to several thousand rupees through Paytm.

At the end of June, Paytm had 337 million customers, according to regulatory documents filed with the stock market authorities.

The transactions, worth over $ 54 billion in 2020-21 reported by the company, make it India's largest payment platform.

Digital payments in India have grown 16-fold over the past four years, from 1.6 billion transactions in 2017 to 26 billion in fiscal year 2020-21.

Mumbai-based financial analysis firm Motilal Oswal estimates digital payments in the country will cross $ 3.1 trillion in value by 2026.

But Paytm posted a net loss of 17 billion rupees last year, on a turnover of 31.86 billion rupees and remains pessimistic.

“We expect to continue to incur net losses,” the company warns in its prospectus, “we may not achieve profitability in the future”.

© 2021 AFP