GMO Internet Group company, GMO Payment Gateway on April 27, 2016 made an undisclosed amount of investment through GMO Global Payment Fund, in One MobiKwik Systems Private Limited, which offers mobile wallet services in India.
GMO-PG decided to invest in MobiKwik as a new strategic partner as part of a focus on the market potential of India. The investment is being made jointly with major US venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and other parties. GMO-PG and MediaTek (Taiwan), the world’s biggest fabless semiconductor company, are jointly lead investors for MobiKwik.
India has a population of 1.2 billion (2013) and a GDP of approximately JPY2.2 trillion (2015). It is an enormous market forecast to expand to a population of 1.4 billion with a USD3.4 trillion GDP by 2020(*2). In particular the rapidly expanding ecommerce market is predicted to grow from USD14 billion in 2015 to USD220 billion in 2025(*3). The number of people with mobile phones, including smartphones, exceeded one billion as of October 2015, around 80% of the population (*4).
On the other hand, only half the population hold bank accounts (*5), and the ownership of credit cards is limited to less than five percent (*6). Thus, the use of mobile wallets, which enable payments for purchases at online shops, utilities, and physical stores through the use of a smartphone or other type of mobile phone, is becoming a standard alternative method of payment to cash, and the size of this market is expected to grow to USD6.6 billion by 2020 (*7).
GMO-PG led this investment through GMO Global Payment Fund in MobiKwik, one of the two major companies that offer mobile wallet services in the country, in a bid to form a new strategic business partnership with a promising and growing company in India. Together with MediaTek, the world’s biggest fabless semiconductor company, GMO-PG is lead investor in a joint investment with major venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and other parties.
GMO-PG has local subsidiaries at five key locations; Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Thailand offering Z.com Payment, its overseas payment service catering to Japanese e-commerce businesses expanding business in these regions. GMO Global Payment Fund is a fund specialized in payments for promising local payment related businesses. Through these two businesses, GMO-PG is achieving synergistic effects as it pushes forward its overseas strategy to expand in the Asian region.