Who is the Owner of Paytm?
From mobile recharges to UPI payments, discover who owns Paytm and how it revolutionised digital payments in India.
You might have heard the famous sound “Paytm Karo” at least once, whether you were paying at a grocery store, or ordering a train ticket, or paying your friends. Today, Paytm has become an integral part of the payment system of millions of Indians. But, have you ever wondered who built it and who owns it now? Let us find out the ownership history of India’s one of the biggest payments app.
Who is the Founder of Paytm?
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Vijay Shekhar Sharma was born on 7th June 1978 in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh. His father Sulom Prakash Sharma was a school teacher and his mother Asha Sharma was a housewife. Their family was a typical middle-class family with education being a priority.
All of Vijay's schooling was in Hindi medium and this became a challenge for him in the engineering college. Yet, he enrolled in the college at the age of 15, and received a B. Tech degree from Delhi College of Engineering at the age of 19.
He had a passion for doing something big from an early age. During his college years he established a platform named “indiasite.net” and sold it for US $1 million.
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How Did Paytm Begin?
Before Paytm came into existence, the parent company which is the One97 Communications, served as a successful B2B business dealing with Value Added Services such as ringtones, cricket scores, astrology alerts, etc. for the big telecom operators before the launch of Paytm in 2010.
When 3G came into existence, he had the idea to bring digitisation to the payment system as well and he came up with the idea of a mobile wallet and named it as Paytm which expands to Pay Through Mobile.
Paytm initially began as a mobile recharge company where users can recharge their prepaid mobiles online. But Vijay Shekhar Sharma had a bigger vision which was to change the way Indians do business and bring a shift from cash to digital.
The Turning Point Through Demonitisation
The biggest game-changer was when the Indian government announced demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes in 2016. Paytm overnight became the solution for millions of Indians. Everyone, from shop keepers to auto rickshaw drivers, turned to Paytm and its growth skyrocketed.
The Forbes mentions: “One of the biggest beneficiaries of India's 2016 demonetization, Paytm has notched up more than 540 million users with 46 million daily active users.”
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Who Owns Paytm Today?
Paytm is still owned by the parent company One97 Communications Limited. It has many shareholders as it is a publicly listed company.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of One97 Communications is its biggest individual shareholder in the company.
Paytm is the story of a boy from a small town in Uttar Pradesh, who went on to revolutionise the way Indians see money. Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the founder and face of Paytm and from his humble beginnings to becoming a Fintech Giant, it has become an inspiring story in Indian Business history.
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