Paytm Bags BCCI's Title Sponsorship Rights

Indian e-commerce shopping website Paytm has bagged Board of Control for Cricket in India's title sponsorship rights for all series played at home till 2019. Paytm will pay Rs 2.42 crore for every international match hosted by BCCI. Approximately eighty-four matches are scheduled in the calendar so far. The first home series will be against South Africa starting September.

BCCI welcomes @Paytm as the new home series title sponsor pic.twitter.com/y1XHaDvVI6

- BCCI (@BCCI) July 30, 2015

Paytm - owned by One97 communications -  won the rights on Thursday for the next four years. The sponsorship was previously held by Indian consumer electronics company Micromax, which paid 2.02 Crore per international fixture.

The BCCI will earn the big bucks over the next four years from Paytm. This is in addition to what BCCI, the richest cricket Board in the world, gets from its broadcast partners and team sponsors - STAR Sports.

There were two bidders for the title sponsorship. Micromax's bid was not opened because their papers were incomplete. Paytm's winning bid was Rs.203.28 Crores which will be paid over 4 years.

BCCI secretary Anurag Thakur said: "With nearly 84 matches scheduled over the next four years with all major countries playing in India, we are hopeful that Paytm will be able to build a strong and strategic association with cricket.

"We are also happy that the realisation has increased by 20%. It augurs well for Indian cricket. I am thankful to Paytm for their interest and faith in Indian Cricket and welcome them on board."

Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder & CEO of Paytm, said, "Cricket is the dream sport for us in India. Over the next four years, we will continue to invest strongly in cricket and other sports. As a growing brand which has big plans for a billion strong Indians, there is no better platform than cricket in India."

More about Paytm:

Paytm, an Indian online payments platform backed by China's Alibaba, is pushing deeper into India's booming e-commerce industry with a zero-commission mobile app marketplace targeted at small and medium-sized firms, the mainstay of the country's economy. Paytm provides mobile recharge, DTH recharge and bill payment facilities. Paytm has launched India's largest mobile payment service platform last year and now has over 40 million wallets and is preferred mode of payment across leading consumer internet companies such as Uber, bookmyshow, MakeMyTrip.

Paytm, which has yet to turn a profit, does not charge merchants commission on their sales, making money instead on commissions levied when they transfer money earned out of the site.

Paytm expects to have 100,000 merchants on its app by the end of the year, up from about 33,000 (approximately) today on their general web platform. It expects to grow the number of stock-keeping units - essentially, units sold - from 8.5 million today (approximately) to 100 million by the end of the year.

(With inputs from Rica Roy)