Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the founder and CEO of Paytm, an Indian e-commerce company. He started Paytm in 2010 after founding One97 Communications in 2000. Sharma faced difficulties in his studies and struggled with English, but was determined to learn. He went on to create and sell his first company while still a student. Through hard work and perseverance, Sharma grew Paytm into a multi-billion dollar company, becoming one of India's most successful entrepreneurs against many challenges.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the founder and CEO of Paytm, an Indian e-commerce company. He started Paytm in 2010 after founding One97 Communications in 2000. Sharma faced difficulties in his studies and struggled with English, but was determined to learn. He went on to create and sell his first company while still a student. Through hard work and perseverance, Sharma grew Paytm into a multi-billion dollar company, becoming one of India's most successful entrepreneurs against many challenges.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the founder and CEO of Paytm, an Indian e-commerce company. He started Paytm in 2010 after founding One97 Communications in 2000. Sharma faced difficulties in his studies and struggled with English, but was determined to learn. He went on to create and sell his first company while still a student. Through hard work and perseverance, Sharma grew Paytm into a multi-billion dollar company, becoming one of India's most successful entrepreneurs against many challenges.
Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the founder and CEO of Paytm, an Indian e-commerce company. He started Paytm in 2010 after founding One97 Communications in 2000. Sharma faced difficulties in his studies and struggled with English, but was determined to learn. He went on to create and sell his first company while still a student. Through hard work and perseverance, Sharma grew Paytm into a multi-billion dollar company, becoming one of India's most successful entrepreneurs against many challenges.
Vijay Sharma Born Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, India Nationality Indian Alma mater Delhi College of Engineering Occupation Founder & CEO of Paytm andO ne97 Communicatio ns Limited Paytm
Type Private Industry Internet Founded 2010 Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma Headquarters Noida, India Area served India [1] Key people Harinder Takhar, Services E-commerce (Online shopping) [2] Parent One97 Website paytm.com • Paytm is an Indian e-commerce shopping website headquartered in Noida, India, launched in 2010. It is owned by One97 Communications The firm started by offering mobile recharging, adding bill payment and e- commerce, with products similar to businesses such as Flipkart, Amazon.com, Snapdeal. In 2015, it added booking bus travel.
History • Paytm was founded and incubated by One97 communications in 2010 as a prepaid mobile recharge website. Paytm is an acronym for "Pay Through Mobile".with Android,windows and iOS apps. Vijay Shekhar Sharma
• Vijay Shekhar Sharma is an Indian entrepreneur and founder
of Paytm. Sharma was born in Aligarh, UP in a modest family. Sharma cites Alibaba's founder Jack Ma and Masayoshi Son of Softbank as his inspirations. • In December 2015, Sharma criticised Facebook's Free Basics initiative in India, as being against the principle of net neutrality Early life • He faced difficulty in his studies at Delhi College of Engineering because he did not speak English. In 1997, while in college Sharma started the website indiasite.net and sold it two years later for $1 million.
Career • In 2001, he started One97 Communications which offered mobile content like news, cricket scores, ringtones, jokes and exam results. One97 now is Paytm’s parent company. He started college at 15 and runs a billion dollar company at age 37 now Background
• Mr. Vijay Shekhar Sharma is the Founder of Paytm Mobile Solutions
Private Limited and serves as its Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Sharma Founded One97 Communications Ltd in 2000 and serves as its Chairman, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer. • He is a Partner of One97 Mobility Fund. Mr. Sharma is responsible for the strategy and direction for One97 Communications and leads it in all areas relating to business expansion as well as product road map. • He is an Advisor of Socialblood.org. He serves as an Investment Advisor at One97 Communications Limited, Investment Arm. Mr. Sharma has more than 10 years of experience in the telecom and new media industries, having founded his first venture XS Corps while he was at college, which he sold to Lotus Interworks LLC, New Jersey in 1999. • Prior to founding One97 Communications, Mr. Sharma played key roles in a number of organizations such as Riverrun Software Services Group Limited, Inter Solutions Software Private Limited, Startec Global Communications Limited, focusing on the design and development of various products and applications for the technology, media, and telecom industries. • Mr. Sharma serves as the Chairman of MobiSwipe Technologies Pvt Ltd. He has been a Director of One97 Communications Limited since December 22, 2000. He serves as a Member of Advisory Board at Milaap Social Ventures. He holds a Bachelors degree in Engineering from Delhi College of Engineering. Paytm Founder, Vijay Shekhar Sharma’s incredible life story! • Vijay Shekhar Sharma owns a company whose current value is a little over $3 billion in the market in 2016, a dream dreamt when he was struggling to make ends meet with Rs 10 in pocket. But he tasted victory the hard way. Nothing came easy for him. • Life tested him right from the beginning of his journey to become one of the most influential people in the business world today. Though he passed his higher secondary when he was just 14 years old, a child prodigy of sorts, making it through college was the first tough challenge he faced when he left the cosy comfort of his small hometown outside Aligarh and ventured into the real world. • A topper in his school, he was lost in transition in college-Delhi College of Engineering. Coming from a very humble background (his father was a highly principled, school teacher, who refused to earn the extra buck through tuitions, because he believed in what was the right thing to do), Vijay did not know how to read and write English for he completed his school education completely in Hindi, in his small town. • However, he realised soon enough that to make it through college he must start learning the language first and with the help of books, second hand magazines and his friends, he mastered the language in a way which few can. His modus operandi was to read a Hindi version of the book simultaneously with the English-one, a habit that ensured that he soon learnt to read two books at the same time! But it wasn't easy to say the least. • The first-bencher in school slowly started gravitating towards the back benches, and in a short while, was so disheartened and disillusioned with his bad grades, mostly due to language constraints, that he completely stopped attending college. • So he taught himself English using dictionaries and poring over second- hand magazines. It was the mid-90s and copies of Fortune 500 transported the teen to a new world - that of Silicon Valley and the internet. He felt he belonged there, but as was the case so often in those years, there was a major obstruction. "There was no way I could have gone. I remember the IIM fee was Rs. 2,30,000! So this was the underdog movement for me, I said, 'one day I will be worth enough to hire these people'". • While still in college, he created a company that included a search engine, sold it, then set up One97, which provided Value-Added Services or VAS like premium or paid content to mobile phone operators. The future looked bright and then the stock market crashed. That's when bus-rides became a luxury and tea a treat.
Then, in 2010, he launched Paytm, an online payment platform. And it all
came together. 4,000 employees now, an online wallet that is near ubiquitous and a full-blown e-commerce site.
Among his investors are Jack Ma of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba
and Ratan Tata.
"It doesn't matter whether you are from a small or big town. It doesn't matter at all. You need sincerity. Either you're in or out," he says with the decisiveness that rests on a body of success. • Things took to a better turn when he began One97, the parent company of Paytm. They started experimenting with the three basics of internet- content, advertising and commerce. But the big eureka moment came in 2011 when he first pitched the idea of entering the payment ecosystem in front of his board. The board was not convinced, as he was talking about betting the company's money on a non-existent market.
"Some other entrepreneur would have sold the equity and started their own company. But I aspire to build a 100 year old company. I think that men and boys are different because the boys flip and sell. Men run and build legacies," Vijay said. • So he put 1% of his equity, which was about $2 million around 2011, on the table and said, "This is for all of you, if I waste the money that we put on the site." He adds, "There is no fun in doing what others ask you to do, the real fun is in doing what people say you can't do."
And it is with this belief that the first avatar of Paytm, Pay Through Mobile, was born, going rapidly onto becoming the next big thing of the startup ecosystem in India. And, since then it was never looking back. • Thank you
