New Delhi: 27 hrs, Vijay Shekhar Sharma 10,000 (134.30) per month, a meager salary which did not help his marriage prospects.
“In 2004-05, my father asked me to shut down his company and take up a job even for Rs 30,000,” said Sharma, who founded the digital payments firm Paytm In 2010, told Reuters.
At the time, the trained engineer sold mobile content through a small company.
“The families of prospective brides will never call us back after finding out that I earn around Rs 10,000 per month,” Sharma said. “I had become a bachelor ineligible for my family.”
Last week, 43-year-old Sharma led Paytm’s $2.5 billion initial public offering (IPO). The fintech firm has become the hallmark of a new India, where the country’s first generation of startups are making great debuts in the stock market and creating new millionaires.
Born to a schoolteacher father and a homemaker mother in a small town in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, Sharma, who became India’s youngest billionaire in 2017, still prefers to drink tea in a roadside car. and often take short morning walks to buy milk. and bread.
About when China’s Ant Group first invested in Paytm in 2015, Sharma said, “For a long time my parents didn’t know what their son was doing.” “Once my mother read about my net worth in a Hindi newspaper and asked me, ‘Vijay do you really have the kind of money they say you have?'”
Forbes has put Sharma’s net worth at $2.4 billion.
“What are my chances?”
Paytm started as a mobile recharge company a decade ago and grew rapidly after ride-hailing firm Uber listed it as an instant payment option in India. Its use increased rapidly in 2016 when India’s ban on high-denomination currency notes fueled digital payments.
Paytm, whatever matters softbank and Berkshire Hathaway, as its backers, have since branched out into services including insurance and gold sales, film and flight ticketing, and bank deposits and remittances.
While Paytm pioneered digital payments in India, the space soon became crowded, as Google, Amazon, WhatsApp and Walmart’s PhonePe set out to grab a slice of the more than $95.29 trillion market by the end of March 2025. Services introduced, according to EY.
That push from global giants gave Sharma a rare moment of doubt, which he raised with the billionaire founder of SoftBank tycoon. masayoshi sono,
“I called Massa and said – everyone’s here now, what do you think my odds are?”
Son, Yahoo! An early investor in! And Alibaba told Sharma to “raise more money, double and go all in” and focus all of its energy on building payments, unlike rivals, which had other primary businesses.
Sharma, who is married and has a son, said he never looked back.
While some market analysts are concerned about when Paytm will turn profitable, Sharma is confident of his company’s success.
In 2017, Paytm launched a bill payment app in Canada and a year later entered Japan with a mobile wallet.
“My dream is to take the Paytm flag to San Francisco, New York, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo. And when people see it they say – you know it’s an Indian company,” Sharma said.
“In 2004-05, my father asked me to shut down his company and take up a job even for Rs 30,000,” said Sharma, who founded the digital payments firm Paytm In 2010, told Reuters.
At the time, the trained engineer sold mobile content through a small company.
“The families of prospective brides will never call us back after finding out that I earn around Rs 10,000 per month,” Sharma said. “I had become a bachelor ineligible for my family.”
Last week, 43-year-old Sharma led Paytm’s $2.5 billion initial public offering (IPO). The fintech firm has become the hallmark of a new India, where the country’s first generation of startups are making great debuts in the stock market and creating new millionaires.
Born to a schoolteacher father and a homemaker mother in a small town in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, Sharma, who became India’s youngest billionaire in 2017, still prefers to drink tea in a roadside car. and often take short morning walks to buy milk. and bread.
About when China’s Ant Group first invested in Paytm in 2015, Sharma said, “For a long time my parents didn’t know what their son was doing.” “Once my mother read about my net worth in a Hindi newspaper and asked me, ‘Vijay do you really have the kind of money they say you have?'”
Forbes has put Sharma’s net worth at $2.4 billion.
“What are my chances?”
Paytm started as a mobile recharge company a decade ago and grew rapidly after ride-hailing firm Uber listed it as an instant payment option in India. Its use increased rapidly in 2016 when India’s ban on high-denomination currency notes fueled digital payments.
Paytm, whatever matters softbank and Berkshire Hathaway, as its backers, have since branched out into services including insurance and gold sales, film and flight ticketing, and bank deposits and remittances.
While Paytm pioneered digital payments in India, the space soon became crowded, as Google, Amazon, WhatsApp and Walmart’s PhonePe set out to grab a slice of the more than $95.29 trillion market by the end of March 2025. Services introduced, according to EY.
That push from global giants gave Sharma a rare moment of doubt, which he raised with the billionaire founder of SoftBank tycoon. masayoshi sono,
“I called Massa and said – everyone’s here now, what do you think my odds are?”
Son, Yahoo! An early investor in! And Alibaba told Sharma to “raise more money, double and go all in” and focus all of its energy on building payments, unlike rivals, which had other primary businesses.
Sharma, who is married and has a son, said he never looked back.
While some market analysts are concerned about when Paytm will turn profitable, Sharma is confident of his company’s success.
In 2017, Paytm launched a bill payment app in Canada and a year later entered Japan with a mobile wallet.
“My dream is to take the Paytm flag to San Francisco, New York, London, Hong Kong and Tokyo. And when people see it they say – you know it’s an Indian company,” Sharma said.
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