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| moonlightgardern.com Andrew Edward Ultron andrewedward38@gmail.com |
“Two thousand seventeen will be ours! How could it not be?”
Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, lit by spotlights and shouting into his microphone to wild applause at his mobile-payments startup’s annual party in January, has reason to celebrate. Paytm is cashing in big on India’s fitful move away from paper currency, minting Sharma, 38, as India’s youngest billionaire. Forbes estimates his net worth at $1.3 billion following a December 2016 funding round that valued Paytm at $4.86 billion.
Sharma finished high school at 14, but had to wait a year to enter college because he was too young to take the entrance exam for Delhi Technological University. While there, he built his first Web company, web portal Indiasite.net, selling it for $1 million after graduating. In 2001, he cofounded the mobile-marketing firm One97 Communications, which became Paytm’s parent company a decade later.
Backed by Alibaba, Paytm began as a simple mobile wallet and has expanded into a platform for buying groceries, booking flights, paying home electric bills and more. When India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, announced the demonetization of 86 percent of the country’s paper currency last November—an attempt to crack down on tax evasion and money laundering—Sharma recognized an opportunity. Paytm immediately launched a major ad campaign and rolled out versions of its app in 11 languages, hoping to bring Paytm into rural areas where it had less traction.
It worked: The number of daily transactions on the platform doubled to 5 million within 10 days and has since risen to 8 million. In February, Paytm hit 200 million users, up 64% from January 2016. Sharma’s next project is an online-payments bank launching in March. “We are on a mission to change this country for good,” he says.
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