bengaluru on the back of raising 14 billion from softbank paytm is making aggressive moves to challenge existing players in verticals like movie ticketing travel and hotels with the help of deep discounts the payments firm has also transferred a senior executive nitin misra who was head of products for its core payments business to lead the hotels and packages segment misra a former airtel official is in active discussions with stakeholders in the online hotel business including internetbased startups in the hospitality space multiple people aware of the development said these businesses are being allocated bigger budgets which will be largely used for discounting and marketing to garner shares from players like makemytrip bookmyshow oyo rooms and others paytm has been using cashbacks and discounting to get a footprint into the travel and movie ticketing sector toi reported earlier that paytm was in talks with events ticketing platform insiderin for a majority stake a move aimed at countering bookmyshows event business paytm wants to generate about 1 billion from these businesses and adding the online hotels business would improve its chances a paytm spokesperson confirmed the new role of misra in the company after two years as head of payment products nitin is now looking forward to setting up the hotels and packages vertical in paytm the spokesperson said sources aware of the companys plans pointed out paytm wants to aggressively penetrate these new businesses as it would also mean higher volumes of transactions on the platform while incumbents like makemytrip and bookmyshow have been investing in discounts their quantum too has increased as paytm is trying to disrupt the market with freebies to be sure mmt spent almost 50 additional funds for marketing and sales promotions in the quarter ending march 2017 at 788 million compared to 53 million a year ago mmt also recently raised 330 million to take on the likes of paytm and oyo roomspaytm has been in talks with us as they want to have a significant play in the hotels and packaging business with softbank on board now they are ready to invest the capital just like they did for travel and movie ticketing being in the travel business its a natural extension for the company to foray into the hotel booking space aa executive of a hotel booking platform saidanother person aware of paytms plan said that bookmyshows model is not based on pure discounting while paytms differentiation has been multiple promotional offers paytms continuous discounting has prompted bookmyshow to counter with freebies as well despite having a much larger share of the movie ticketing market the person addeddeep kalra founder and group ceo mmt said it is understandable to see newer players foraying into this segment that said travel is a complex industry and requires undivided and focused efforts in order to become successful we believe that specialisation and focused attention are key to winning customers confidence in this space travel is our primary business and we have developed deep expertise