Berkshire Hathaway, the Warren Buffett-run holding company, has exited India’s Paytm by selling its 2.5% stake in the digital payments service provider via a bulk deal on Friday.
The company sold its entire stake in the digital payments firm for about 13.71 billion rupees ($164.70 million), as first reported by Reuters.
According to the news agency, Berkshire’s BH International Holdings sold more than 15.6 million shares of Paytm, with a weighted average price of 877.29 rupees per share.
It noted that buyers of the share are not known. Paytm, which specialises in digital payment systems, e-commerce and finance, did not immediately respond to Reuters request for additional details, while Berkshire was not available for comment.
Berkshire’s exit comes after a string of selldowns for the firm, including stake cuts by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group and the exit of China’s Alibaba Group.
In October 2021, global reinsurer Swiss Re announced its plans to invest $123 million in Paytm’s Paytm Insuretech Private Limited (PIT) business..
The financial services firm states it would use this investment to leverage its customer base via the insurtech unit to develop new insurance products and solutions.
According to the announcement, Swiss Re sees this move as an opportunity to establish a bigger foothold in the Indian insurance market.
