One 97 Communications Ltd, which owns the Paytm brand, said on Friday that its consolidated quarterly loss shrank to less than a fourth from a year earlier, even as it posted strong revenue growth in its digital payments, merchant subscription and loan-distribution businesses.

Loss narrowed to Rs 167.5 crore in the fiscal fourth quarter ended March 31 from Rs 762.5 crore a year earlier, and Rs 392.1 crore in the previous three months.

Quarterly revenue from operations grew 13% sequentially and nearly 51% from a year earlier to Rs 2,334.5 crore. In the core payment services, revenue rose 41% on-year to Rs 1,467 crore.

The company’s March-quarter revenue includes Rs 182 crore of unified payments interface (UPI) incentive (received from the government) for the fiscal year.

For the year ended March 31, the Noida-based company posted a loss of Rs 1,776.5 crore on total revenue of Rs 8,400 crore (about $1.03 billion). While the loss has narrowed 26% from a year earlier, revenue has grown almost 60%. Revenue from operations for One97 in FY23, stood at Rs 7,990.3 crore.

In an interview with Bloomberg last year, Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma had said that Paytm was looking to hit $1 billion in annual revenue by the end of fiscal 2023.

Earlier, in April last year, he had written to shareholders, informing them that the company was expected to break even by the end of September 2023 on an operating basis. It posted an adjusted operating profit — or earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, before employee stock-option related cost — of Rs 31 crore nine months ahead of the guidance, in the quarter ended December 31, 2022.It recorded an adjusted operating profit of Rs 234 crore in the March 2023 quarter, after including the UPI incentive received for the full year.

The company said it significantly increased its loan distribution business with revenue from financial services and others growing to Rs 475 crore in the March quarter. For FY23, revenue under this head was Rs 1,540 crore.

“Our two-sided platform across consumers and merchants continued to expand, along with growing user engagement,” said One97, in relation to the March-quarter revenues.

Loan disbursals grew more than threefold year-on-year to Rs 12,554 crore for the quarter ended March 31.

While updating the exchanges about its operational performance last month, One97 Communications said it had disbursed Rs 4,468 crore in loans in March alone, higher than a year earlier. The number of loans disbursed in March through partners was 4.1 million loans.

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