Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the man who manifested an implausible dream of a digital India by launching India’s largest digitalpayment gateway, Paytm App, which now captures over 70-80 percent market shares of payment gateways. In the year 2019, the digital giant reportedly processed over 400 million transactions each month; that’s 5 times higher than the next biggest player in the payment gateway market, making him one of the richest Indian billionaires with a net worth of $2.6 billion.
The brainchild of a small-towner is valued at $16 billion and it is the most funded start-up unicorn in the country with some of the most reliable investors backing its large feats! Paytm was the pioneer in digitalizing the cash flow in the online as well as offline outlets of the country.
Evolving with the strides, the opportunist entrepreneur transformed the all-in-one payment gateway into an entire eco-system with wallet, investments, wealth management, e-commerce, paymentsbank. According to a recent report, the digital platform boasts of an approx. 80 million user-base, with over 16 million merchants across unorganized and organized sectors. With the digital platform teeming with a loyal base of consumers, Mr. Sharma is driving towards financial services as the next major frontier for growth. Having a platform already blooming with consumers, the payment wizard predicts to whiz its way to the number one position in the online trading market with a 10 – 15 % market share in 2-3 years. The digital money minter plans to invest around Rs 10,000 crore over the next three years to expand the financial services of the firm. Apart from diversifying his own basket with innovative and disruptive ideas, Mr. Sharma is also backing India’s budding start-ups like Unacademy and Innov8.
The Paytm chief quoted that India’s economy would be at $5 trillion by 2025. He also believes that the established businesses have a big role to play in jostling the dripping economy. We could say with such affluential and far-sighted talents shouldering the Indian economy, this is not a distant dream!
