Background
Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Paytm. He was born on 8th of July in 1978 in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India. He is the third child to Mr. Sulom Prakash and Ms. Asha Sharma. He belonged to a normal middle class family. His father was a school teacher.
Mr. Vijay has been a good student and he was determined and hard working from the very beginning.At the very young age of 14, he completed his schooling from Hindi medium school. Mr. Vijay Shekhar Sharma joined Delhi Technological University for bachelor degree in BSc. Engineering. He was among two students from his village to enroll in engineering. He wasn’t a brilliant student of engineering, instead he was more interested in entrepreneurship. From his college life,
He got married to Mridula Sharma in 2005 and they now have a son Vivaan Sharma.
Entrepreneurial Journey
During his college life in 1997, when all his friends were preparing for placement, he was working for his company XS Corp which worked as a content management tool. XS corp is now used by many publications across the world. In 1999, XS Corp was sold to a U.S. based entrepreneur.
In 2000, Mr. Vijaya Shekhar Sharma founded One97 Communications Limited in New Delhi. One97 Communications is an Indian fintech company. One97 is the parent company of Paytm.
The Paytm Magic
Paytm (Payment Through Mobile) was founded in August 2010 by Mr. Vijaya Shekhar Sharma. He is also the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Paytm. Paytm revolutionized the payment system in India. Paytm inow provides various digital services like payment for utilities, digital wallet, payment bank, ticketing platform, money transfer and many more. Now, Paytm holds around 9% of UPI market share, registering transactions worth INR 6.7 lakh crore in 2021. Paytm raised $2 million as an initial investment. Paytm started as a prepaid mobile and DTH recharge platform. It is one of the most trusted payment UPI systems in India.
Paytm and Demonetization
Even though the establishment of Paytm was in the year 2010, its actual journey started back in 2016, when the Indian government announced demonetization. The step of demonetization led India into digital payment service and Paytm became one of the aggressive companies to enter the digital payment market. Right after the demonetization, Paytm users increased to 400 million users and the daily transaction of 25 million was conducted. India was leaping towards the journey of becoming an economic giant and Mr. Vijay Shekhar Sharma was assisting India by making Paytm a Made in India digital payment service. In 2018, Berkshire Hathaway Company of Warren Buffet invested $300 million in Paytm. Similarly, there are many big institutional investor in Paytm. Some of such investors are: Softbank, Ant Financial, AGH Holdings, SAIF Partners, T Rowe Price and Discovery Capital.
| 1 | Paytm User Base 2021 | 330 million users |
| 2 | Number of Bank accounts linked to Paytm Bank 2021 | 60 million accounts |
| 3 | Paytm Payment Banks Monthly transaction 2021 | 926 million transactions |
| 4 | Paytm Merchant base 2021 | 21.1 million |
Mr. Vijay Shekhar Sharma started his journey from making Rs. 10,000 per month to becoming India’s second youngest billionaire in 2020. Shekhar has been awarded with the Yash Bharati award, which is the highest award to any civilian by the Government of Uttar Pradesh. In 2017, Times Magazine included him among the 100 most influential people of 2017. Also, NDTV awarded him as ‘Indian of the Year’ for 2016.
Conclusion
In recent time, Paytm went public, making it one of the biggest IPO in India’s history. The story of Mr. Vijay Shekhar Sharma is a true inspiration. His story is inspiring and unique and shows the transformation from rags to riches. The opportunities in life are limited but one has to keep on trying to make it. To become a successful entrepreneur one needs to follow the passion and take calculated risk.
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