New Delhi: Ant Group, a major shareholder in Paytm’s parent company, One97 Communications, is selling its remaining 5.84% stake for ₹3,803 crore ($434 million) on August 5, according to Reuters.
This sale is part of Ant Group’s gradual move away from Paytm, amid more rules and a changing investor scene in India’s digital payments area.
Alibaba’s Ant Group has been cutting its stake in Paytm for the last couple of years. In this upcoming deal, they’ll sell 3.77 crore shares at ₹1,020 each. This price is about 5.4% lower than Paytm’s August 4 closing price of ₹1,078.20 on the NSE. This means Antfin (Netherlands) Holding B.V. will no longer have any shares in Paytm. Investment banks Goldman Sachs India Securities and Citigroup Global Markets India are handling this sale, which Moneycontrol sources are calling a cleanup trade with no lock-in period after the sale.
This move isn’t the first time Ant Group has reduced its investment in Paytm. They sold a 4% stake for $246 million in May 2025, and in August 2023, they sold 10.3% to Paytm’s CEO, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, through his company, Resilient Asset Management. These sales, along with this latest deal, show Ant Group is pulling back from Paytm, likely due to rules about Chinese investments in India.
Other big investors are also selling their Paytm shares. SoftBank Group of Japan and Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway have sold a substantial chunk of their shares in One97 Communications over the last two years. These sales come as Paytm deals with tricky regulations and tries to improve its finances after some tough times.
Despite these exits, Paytm seems to be bouncing back. The company made its first profit ever of ₹122.5 crore in Q1 FY26, which is much better than the ₹838.9 crore loss from the same time last year. This improvement is because of cost-cutting using AI, a big decline in marketing costs (over 50%), and a more efficient employee structure. Indian mutual funds have upped their stake in Paytm to 13.86% in Q1 FY26, which suggests they are feeling better about the company’s progress.
Paytm’s stock has been doing well, rising 16.01% in the past month and giving investors a solid 116.24% return over the past year. On August 4, the stock closed at ₹1,079.90 on the NSE, up 0.33%, showing investors are still optimistic despite the upcoming stake sale. The company’s market value is over ₹55,250 crore, which shows it’s still a key player in India’s digital payments world.
Ant Group’s complete exit makes you wonder about Paytm’s future partnerships and who will own the company going forward. Without Chinese investors, Paytm could become mostly Indian-owned, which might make it easier to get regulatory approvals, like the payment aggregator licence. Vijay Shekhar Sharma, who now owns 9.05% directly and another 10.24% through Resilient Asset Management, will probably play a big role in guiding the company.