Paytm has announced that it will be shutting down its Canada app from March 14. The company has explained that the shutdown will enable it to focus all its resources on India. The B2C app, meant for making bill payments and scheduling future bill payments, was launched on 2017.

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"In order to focus all our resources on the massive India opportunity, and given the immateriality of the Canada B2C app, we have decided to sunset the Canada B2C app only with effect from March 14, 2022," Paytm said in a filing.

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The company had first launched its Canadian division, called Paytm Labs, at Toronto, Canada. The division was started as a research and development division working on big data, artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve Paytm’s financial products. While Paytm Labs will still exist, it will focus its research on India instead.

"As a part of our Canada operations, we launched a small experiment in the country with a B2C app. Over the last few years, we have built Paytm Labs, our team in Canada to drive innovation for our products and services across the world, whose primary business, amongst others, is research and development analytics of customer data and provision of technical support. We are so proud of this team that continues to innovate and explore more exciting and new opportunities," Paytm said.

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Paytm will not be laying off any employees as a result of the shutdown, reported The Economic Times.

The Paytm stock has continued to slide rapidly over the past few weeks. Paytm shares closed at an all-time low of Rs 1,031.4 on January 13, less than half the value of its IPO price of Rs 2,150. The company has seen a precipitous 33.77 percent drop over the past month.

While Macquarie analysts have pegged a target price of Rs 900 for the scrip, other brokerages like Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, among others, have set up bullish target prices in the range of Rs 1,600-1,900.

Also read: Paytm shares rebound after sliding below Rs 1,000 mark for first time ever

(Edited by : Shoma Bhattacharjee)