Paytm parent One97 Communications has reported a net profit of Rs 226 crore for the second quarter of FY27, up from just Rs 21 crore in the same quarter last year, in results filed on 26 October 2026. Revenue from operations rose 28.5% year-on-year to Rs 2,648 crore, from Rs 2,061 crore a year earlier.
The headline jump comes with an important caveat for founders reading it: the year-ago quarter was hit by a Rs 190 crore impairment on a loan to First Games Technology, Paytm's real-money gaming joint venture. Even stripping that out, the operating trend is strong. EBITDA nearly doubled to Rs 270 crore from Rs 141 crore, and the EBITDA margin improved to 10.2% from 6.8%.
What drove the quarter
Merchant gross merchandise value rose 26% to Rs 7.1 lakh crore, and subscription-paying merchants grew by 27 lakh year-on-year to 1.64 crore. Monthly transacting users rose by 1 crore to 8.5 crore, the highest in around three years, while UPI gross transaction value grew 42%, more than double the industry's 19% growth, according to NPCI data cited by the company.
Alongside the results, Paytm's board approved investments of Rs 500 crore each into its Paytm Cloud Tech unit and its Singapore arm. The company also said the proposed UPI merchant discount rate framework could expand its payment processing margin by 2.5 basis points, with the full effect stabilising over two to three quarters. This was Paytm's sixth consecutive profitable quarter.
Why it matters for founders
Paytm's turnaround was not built on one quarter of cost-cutting. It came from a merchant base that now pays subscriptions at scale and from payments volume growing faster than the market. For founders tracking startup funding in India, the lesson is that distribution you own, merchants who renew, beats growth bought with discounts.