New Delhi, May 25 -- Domestic venture capital firm Elevation Capital, which typically makes early-stage bets but also forayed into late-stage investing with the launch of a dedicated fund last year, has encashed more money from a company in which it first invested nearly two decades ago.
The VC firm, which monetised multiple bets last year including travel-tech platform ixigo, home services marketplace Urban Company, fintech lender axio and ecommerce marketplace Meesho, has now sold shares worth Rs 963.6 crore (about $100 million) of digital payments company One 97 Communications Ltd, which operates Paytm. This comes after it sold shares worth Rs 1,670 crore ($186 million) in November 2025.
The investor, which held about close to 14.5% stake in the company and is its largest institutional backer, sold about 8.6 million shares of Paytm stock on the open market, according to stock exchange data. This represents about a 1.35% stake in the Noida-based company.
Of this, Elevation, previously known as SAIF Partners, sold 5.6 million shares through its vehicle 'SAIF III Mauritius', generating Rs 630 crore. The tranche is likely to have generated a multiple of 73x on its investment capital, considering the weighted average cost of acquisition mentioned in the red herring prospectus for its IPO in 2021. Elevation made this investment out of its third fund that has a vintage of 2008.
Previously, in November last year, the vehicle generated Rs 1,092.3 crore via a secondary share sale. It also offloaded shares worth Rs 442.3 crore around October 2024. At the time of Paytm's initial public offering in November 2021, this vehicle had encashed Rs 1,327.7 crore. Previously, this entity had harvested at least Rs 1,540 crore in a secondary share sale to SoftBank, based on its annual report and share price at the time.
Overall, SAIF III Mauritius, has already harvested Rs 5,032 crore from its investment. It still holds about 8.4% stake in the company that is worth more than Rs 6,000 crore.
Other funds
Elevation Capital also invested in Paytm through its fourth fund that it raised in 2010 and had a corpus of $1.3 billion. This fund invested nearly Rs 1,212 crore in Paytm across multiple rounds, per VCCircle estimates.
This vehicle has cashed out on Rs 268 crore worth of shares, selling 2.4 million shares in the latest tranche. This translates into a 3.7x MOIC on the capital it invested based on the weighted average cost of acquisition. Cumulatively, including the last open market transaction involving Rs 463.7 crore, the IPO sale of Rs 563.6 crore, and Rs 628 crore in secondary sale in 2017, the vehicle has generated Rs 1,923 crore.
This fund's remaining stake in Paytm is worth Rs 2,564 crore, taking its realized and unrealized gains to Rs 4,487 crore.
Meanwhile, the VC firm's fifth fund cashed out with Rs 66 crore as part of the latest tranche. Adding to its previous harvests, the total cash generated by this entity is about Rs 244 crore, a little short of the principal amount it put in. If we consider its unrealized gains, the number is likely to be about Rs 200 crore higher.
Elevation also held a 0.61% stake in Paytm through a co-investment entity of the fifth fund, but hasn't disclosed any share sales. Overall, the Bengaluru-based investor has pocketed Rs 7,199 crore from its investment in Paytm over a course of 19 years.
Paytm's shares have dropped 11% in the last six months, though they made some recovery after plummeting in 2024 when the Reserve Bank of India ordered Paytm Payments Bank to wind down operations and after its IPO in 2021 over valuation concerns. Its shares are still trading 29% below the IPO price of Rs 2,150 apiece.
Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from VC Circle.