PVR ties up with Paytm to sell movie tickets

New Delhi, March 21: PVR plans to sell movie tickets worth Rs 250-300 crore using Paytm's platform in the first year of their association as the two firms tied up today to sell cinema tickets.

The two firms today announced to bring PVR's movie tickets to Paytm's e-commerce platform as the latter forays into the online movie ticket segment.

"In the first year of this relationship, PVR targets to sell tickets worth Rs 2.5-3 billion on Paytm's e-commerce platform besides selling tickets from the box offices and other channels", PVR and Paytm said in a joint statement.

Paytm said it is aggressively extending its presence in new verticals as part of its strategy to be ubiquitous in daily life of its customers.

"Paytm has set aggressive targets for itself and intends to double the share of online movie ticketing market in quick time. With over 125 million registered users and 90 million orders per month, Paytm is the perfect e-commerce platform to reach out to the growing movie aficionados of the country", said the release.

It said India's movie ticketing market size is worth USD 2 billion, growing at 10 per cent per annum, but the online marketplace is only 15 per cent of the total size.

"Launch of movie tickets on Paytm is in line with our overall strategy of bringing more and more payment use cases online.Today, online platforms penalise customers for paying in advance digitally as they are asked to pay a fees and surcharge", said Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder & CEO, Paytm.

Paytm said it plans to launch movies with up to 100 per cent and other weekday special promotions to encourage users to try booking movies on the Paytm app. Sanjeev Kumar Bijli, Joint Managing Director, PVR Ltd said: "We have partnered with Paytm as our e-ticketing channel partner. Reaching over 500 screens brings further responsibilities... With Paytm, we envision to touch millions of new movie goers."

Paytm also said that it has a collaborative approach with cinemas and other brands and aims to offer consumers incentives to drive the currently low online penetration from less than 15 per cent to more than 50 per cent in the next 3 years.

"We have budgeted Rs 120 crore this year alone for this", Sharma said. Starting this month, PVR tickets and Food and Beverages (F&B) products will be sold and marketed on Paytm portal's web, mobile apps and other affiliate channels.

For PVR, this shift also helps in reducing the burden at the box office by reducing costs and making up for the lack of customer data thereby helping in predictive modeling, the statement said.

PTI